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"slug": "best-korean-barbecue-santa-clara-charcoal-grill-korean-spring-late-night",
"title": "Santa Clara’s Tastiest Charcoal-Grilled Korean Barbecue Spot Stays Open Until Midnight",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988447\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988447\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring Korean barbecue while a server attends to the grill.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Santa Clara’s Korean Spring BBQ, the late-night special is a massive $200 barbecue feast. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I love the moment you first step into a proper \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/korean-food\">Korean\u003c/a> barbecue restaurant: The sweet, smoky smell of charred meat instantly seeps into your clothing. The industrial-size hood vents whir and hum, working overtime. And when the server hustles over to your table to line the edge of the grill with aluminum foil, then lowers a tray of red-hot charcoal into the pit? That’s when you know it’s \u003ci>really\u003c/i> on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such are the charms of Korean Spring BBQ, one of the Bay Area’s last remaining Korean barbecue restaurants where the meat is still grilled over wood charcoal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Located in a busy plaza in Santa Clara’s sprawling, informal Koreatown, Korean Spring doesn’t have the slick branding and Insta-optimized aesthetics of some of the newer high-end KBBQ hotspots and trendy \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13965215/all-you-can-eat-wagyu-beef-hot-pot-shabu-shabu-mikiya-santa-clara\">AYCE wagyu purveyors\u003c/a>. Instead, the place has more of an old-school, mom-and-pop vibe. The dining room is all utilitarian metallic surfaces, with minimal decor, and the people who come here seem like they come purely for the love of the meat — and for the clean, smoky char you can never quite get with a gas grill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of particular interest to us? The restaurant stays open until midnight six nights a week, and starting at 9 p.m., they serve a $200 “Midnight Menu” combo set that comes with four different cuts of USDA Prime beef, beef bone soup, a salad and a few other side dishes, plus your choice of soju, beer or soda. It’s a lavish barbecue feast for three or four meat lovers to share — and, as we soon learned, altogether too much food for two greedy midnight diners. Not that we went down without a fight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988449\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988449\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: facade of Korean Spring BBQ restaurant, lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located in the busy Kiely Plaza, the restaurant is open until midnight six nights a week. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At half past nine on a recent Friday night, the restaurant was about half full with parties of four or five — all Asians in their twenties and thirties, chatting happily in Mandarin and Korean. This is the kind of Korean barbecue joint where the staff grills the meat for you at the table, not one of those cook-it-yourself setups. Our friendly attendant got to work as soon as we placed our order, deftly flipping the meat on the hot grill and, in some cases, using scissors to cut it down into progressively smaller pieces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, even experienced Korean barbecue enthusiasts tend to stick with a handful of greatest hits — your ribeye bulgogi, pork belly and L.A. galbi. One nice thing about Korean Spring’s Midnight Menu is that it introduces a number of lesser-known but equally delicious cuts. We started with thinly sliced beef tongue, which was rich and earthy with a fun, snappy texture. Then came the outside skirt, one of our favorites, sliced about as thick as you would cut a steak for stir-fry and astonishingly tender; the flavor was deeply, deeply beefy. The rib finger — the meat between the rib bones, apparently — was the most steak-like of the cuts, with the same satisfying chew and juicy richness you might expect from a nicely grilled ribeye. And the thinly sliced brisket point had a lovely streak of fat in each piece that rendered out while the edges of the meat got nice and crispy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Notably, none of these cuts are marinated, so what you taste is the pure flavor of the Prime-grade beef, with its rich marbling, enhanced by the smoke and char from the charcoal grill. The set comes with a variety of dipping options: doenjang (fermented soybean paste), wasabi, some kind of purple sea salt and, by far our favorite, a slurry of salt, pepper and sesame oil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also couldn’t resist ordering the marinated galbi, or short rib, as a $60 add-on. Here, they cut the well-marbled meat off the bone and grill it like thin strips of steak. We weren’t prepared for how soft and buttery this would be, the fatty parts literally melting away in our mouths. Afterwards, our friendly grill guy cut off the bits of meat and cartilage still attached to the bone and grilled those separately for another taste and texture — those crunchy-chewy bits of connective tissue were some of our favorite bites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13988027,arts_13973430,arts_13961328']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Meanwhile, the non-barbecue side dishes that come with the set all felt incredibly thoughtful, like they’d been carefully calibrated to balance out our meal. I would never think to order something called “tofu salad w/ almond” at a Korean barbecue restaurant, but this was fantastic — salad greens topped with very soft tofu and sliced almonds, then dressed with a sweet doenjang-based dressing. Every time I felt like all of the meat was getting too rich and heavy, I’d take a bite of salad, and then I’d be ready to keep going. A bowl of cloudy beef bone soup, garnished with green onions and served unseasoned, with salt on the side, served a similar palate-refreshing purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the classic steamed egg, or gyeran-jjim, was one of the best versions I’ve had — immaculately fluffy and light. Too often this dish deflates into a sad pancake as soon as you cut into it, but Korean Spring’s held its shape, and its delectable texture, over the course of the meal. The only side we weren’t a fan of was the cheese fondue; dipping our barbecue in melted cheese was a fun novelty, but not something we wanted to do more than once or twice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taken all together, this was more or less our platonic ideal of a Korean barbecue meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Note that Korean Spring isn’t one of those ssam specialists where they give you a half-dozen exotic lettuces to use to wrap your meats. Here, they only offered regular green lettuce — and we had to ask for it. The banchan selection is also pretty limited. Apart from the more substantial side dishes mentioned above, you really only get kimchi, a stack of marinated perilla leaves and a “salad” of pickled onions and jalapeños. But all of it is excellent. In particular, the kimchi is the kind made with whole napa cabbage, cut into bright, crunchy slivers. And I loved wrapping the beef inside the pickled perilla leaves, whose musky tang provided a nice counterpoint to the rich meat. Another essential for any KBBQ connoisseur: slices of raw garlic and jalapeños, refilled quickly and plentifully whenever we asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At $200 before any add-ons, the meal is a bit of a splurge even split between the three or four diners it’s intended to feed. But it’s a worthy splurge if you find yourself in a carnivorous mood and want to treat yourself late at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We dipped and double-dipped our meat in doenjang and sesame oil, wrapped it in lettuce accented with slivers of sharp, pungent garlic. We sipped our broth and then piled more meat on top of rice, reveling in the uniquely Korean pleasures of mixing and matching every bite, and then we went home with a ridiculous amount of leftovers. It was a good night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Korean Spring BBQ is open Monday 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5–9 p.m., Tuesday to Friday 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5 p.m.–midnight, and Saturday to Sunday 11 a.m.–midnight at 1062 Kiely Blvd. in Santa Clara. The “Midnight Menu” is available after 9 p.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988447\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988447\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring Korean barbecue while a server attends to the grill.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Santa Clara’s Korean Spring BBQ, the late-night special is a massive $200 barbecue feast. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I love the moment you first step into a proper \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/korean-food\">Korean\u003c/a> barbecue restaurant: The sweet, smoky smell of charred meat instantly seeps into your clothing. The industrial-size hood vents whir and hum, working overtime. And when the server hustles over to your table to line the edge of the grill with aluminum foil, then lowers a tray of red-hot charcoal into the pit? That’s when you know it’s \u003ci>really\u003c/i> on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such are the charms of Korean Spring BBQ, one of the Bay Area’s last remaining Korean barbecue restaurants where the meat is still grilled over wood charcoal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Located in a busy plaza in Santa Clara’s sprawling, informal Koreatown, Korean Spring doesn’t have the slick branding and Insta-optimized aesthetics of some of the newer high-end KBBQ hotspots and trendy \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13965215/all-you-can-eat-wagyu-beef-hot-pot-shabu-shabu-mikiya-santa-clara\">AYCE wagyu purveyors\u003c/a>. Instead, the place has more of an old-school, mom-and-pop vibe. The dining room is all utilitarian metallic surfaces, with minimal decor, and the people who come here seem like they come purely for the love of the meat — and for the clean, smoky char you can never quite get with a gas grill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of particular interest to us? The restaurant stays open until midnight six nights a week, and starting at 9 p.m., they serve a $200 “Midnight Menu” combo set that comes with four different cuts of USDA Prime beef, beef bone soup, a salad and a few other side dishes, plus your choice of soju, beer or soda. It’s a lavish barbecue feast for three or four meat lovers to share — and, as we soon learned, altogether too much food for two greedy midnight diners. Not that we went down without a fight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988449\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988449\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: facade of Korean Spring BBQ restaurant, lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located in the busy Kiely Plaza, the restaurant is open until midnight six nights a week. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At half past nine on a recent Friday night, the restaurant was about half full with parties of four or five — all Asians in their twenties and thirties, chatting happily in Mandarin and Korean. This is the kind of Korean barbecue joint where the staff grills the meat for you at the table, not one of those cook-it-yourself setups. Our friendly attendant got to work as soon as we placed our order, deftly flipping the meat on the hot grill and, in some cases, using scissors to cut it down into progressively smaller pieces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, even experienced Korean barbecue enthusiasts tend to stick with a handful of greatest hits — your ribeye bulgogi, pork belly and L.A. galbi. One nice thing about Korean Spring’s Midnight Menu is that it introduces a number of lesser-known but equally delicious cuts. We started with thinly sliced beef tongue, which was rich and earthy with a fun, snappy texture. Then came the outside skirt, one of our favorites, sliced about as thick as you would cut a steak for stir-fry and astonishingly tender; the flavor was deeply, deeply beefy. The rib finger — the meat between the rib bones, apparently — was the most steak-like of the cuts, with the same satisfying chew and juicy richness you might expect from a nicely grilled ribeye. And the thinly sliced brisket point had a lovely streak of fat in each piece that rendered out while the edges of the meat got nice and crispy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Notably, none of these cuts are marinated, so what you taste is the pure flavor of the Prime-grade beef, with its rich marbling, enhanced by the smoke and char from the charcoal grill. The set comes with a variety of dipping options: doenjang (fermented soybean paste), wasabi, some kind of purple sea salt and, by far our favorite, a slurry of salt, pepper and sesame oil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also couldn’t resist ordering the marinated galbi, or short rib, as a $60 add-on. Here, they cut the well-marbled meat off the bone and grill it like thin strips of steak. We weren’t prepared for how soft and buttery this would be, the fatty parts literally melting away in our mouths. Afterwards, our friendly grill guy cut off the bits of meat and cartilage still attached to the bone and grilled those separately for another taste and texture — those crunchy-chewy bits of connective tissue were some of our favorite bites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Meanwhile, the non-barbecue side dishes that come with the set all felt incredibly thoughtful, like they’d been carefully calibrated to balance out our meal. I would never think to order something called “tofu salad w/ almond” at a Korean barbecue restaurant, but this was fantastic — salad greens topped with very soft tofu and sliced almonds, then dressed with a sweet doenjang-based dressing. Every time I felt like all of the meat was getting too rich and heavy, I’d take a bite of salad, and then I’d be ready to keep going. A bowl of cloudy beef bone soup, garnished with green onions and served unseasoned, with salt on the side, served a similar palate-refreshing purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the classic steamed egg, or gyeran-jjim, was one of the best versions I’ve had — immaculately fluffy and light. Too often this dish deflates into a sad pancake as soon as you cut into it, but Korean Spring’s held its shape, and its delectable texture, over the course of the meal. The only side we weren’t a fan of was the cheese fondue; dipping our barbecue in melted cheese was a fun novelty, but not something we wanted to do more than once or twice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taken all together, this was more or less our platonic ideal of a Korean barbecue meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Note that Korean Spring isn’t one of those ssam specialists where they give you a half-dozen exotic lettuces to use to wrap your meats. Here, they only offered regular green lettuce — and we had to ask for it. The banchan selection is also pretty limited. Apart from the more substantial side dishes mentioned above, you really only get kimchi, a stack of marinated perilla leaves and a “salad” of pickled onions and jalapeños. But all of it is excellent. In particular, the kimchi is the kind made with whole napa cabbage, cut into bright, crunchy slivers. And I loved wrapping the beef inside the pickled perilla leaves, whose musky tang provided a nice counterpoint to the rich meat. Another essential for any KBBQ connoisseur: slices of raw garlic and jalapeños, refilled quickly and plentifully whenever we asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At $200 before any add-ons, the meal is a bit of a splurge even split between the three or four diners it’s intended to feed. But it’s a worthy splurge if you find yourself in a carnivorous mood and want to treat yourself late at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We dipped and double-dipped our meat in doenjang and sesame oil, wrapped it in lettuce accented with slivers of sharp, pungent garlic. We sipped our broth and then piled more meat on top of rice, reveling in the uniquely Korean pleasures of mixing and matching every bite, and then we went home with a ridiculous amount of leftovers. It was a good night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Korean Spring BBQ is open Monday 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5–9 p.m., Tuesday to Friday 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5 p.m.–midnight, and Saturday to Sunday 11 a.m.–midnight at 1062 Kiely Blvd. in Santa Clara. The “Midnight Menu” is available after 9 p.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "toyose-korean-chicken-garage-late-night-san-francisco",
"title": "SF’s Famous Chicken Garage Is a Late-Night Korean Classic",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13981038\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13981038\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Man devours stretchy cheesy corn while looking over a table crammed full of Korean pub food; his dining companion fills a mug with beer.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Toyose is one of San Francisco’s most popular late-night restaurants, serving classic Korean pub food until 2 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a little past 9 on a recent Friday night, we pulled up to what mostly looked like an ordinary house in the Outer Sunset, a few blocks from Ocean Beach. An angry cartoon chicken, lit up like a beacon next to the unmarked garage door, was the only real indication that this was a restaurant — let alone the most famous \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/late-night\">late-night dining\u003c/a> spot in the neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As soon as we stepped inside the converted garage restaurant, it was easy to see the charm. The dim, cramped dining room was vaguely reminiscent of the hold of an old-timey ship — ropes coiled around wooden beams, half-enebriated diners wobbling their way to the restroom, like they hadn’t quite gotten their sea legs yet. Every table had a big pitcher of Korean lager or a bottle of soju, and a mountainous spread of steaming hot dishes: fiery, gochujang-stained rice cakes; crispy chicken wings; and burbling stone cauldrons of kimchi and soybean paste soup — the kind of simple, satisfying meal you’d expect to find at a classic Korean soju pub.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13980212,arts_13961328,arts_13973430']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>Even though it was our first time at Toyose, I’d been hearing about the place for years, sometimes by name, or just as often as “the Korean chicken garage” or simply The Garage. Over the years, no other Korean restaurant in the city had been recommended to me more frequently or more enthusiastically — and almost always by non-Koreans. That sounds like shade, though I don’t mean it that way: As far as I can tell, Toyose and Dan Sung Sa (aka Porno Palace, in Oakland) were two of the first restaurants to bring the spicy, soju-and-OB-fueled pleasures of \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/the-pub-life-korean-style-1/\">Korean pub life\u003c/a> to the Bay Area mainstream in the early aughts. And if the diverse, jam-packed and \u003ci>extremely happy\u003c/i> dining room we encountered during our meal at Toyose was any indication, the restaurant’s popularity has simply extended far beyond its original niche audience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is to say, Toyose belongs to all of San Francisco now. Or maybe it always has. And even after all these years, the restaurant is still cranking out huge portions of hot comfort food until 2 a.m. on the weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13981039\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13981039\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Exterior of Toyose restaurant at night. A sign with a cartoon bird is lit up next to an unmarked garage door.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located just blocks away from Ocean Beach, the restaurant has been an Outer Sunset staple since 2001. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The restaurant doesn’t really have a signature dish, though popular standards like its kimchi fried rice and seafood pancakes each have their legion of loyalists, quick to proclaim Toyose’s version the best in the city. My personal list of must-order items starts with the whole fried chicken, or tongdak — an entire bird cut up into big, bone-in pieces and then deep-fried. This is the OG style of Korean fried chicken, predating today’s more ubiquitous sweet and spicy sauce-slathered versions (though it’s still a staple \u003ca href=\"https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/sijang-tongdak\">at traditional markets\u003c/a> in Korea). Toyose’s tongdak is a sight to behold — a mountain of fried chicken! — and comes to the table scorchingly hot, with a thin, extra-crispy batter that shatters when you take a bite. It’s especially delicious dipped into the little dish of pepper salt that comes on the side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Toyose’s \u003ca href=\"https://496af86d-33ba-475e-bbdb-31e2a5abb6f7.filesusr.com/ugd/50518f_7d7113e602464ca1a01097eb9b493650.pdf\">menu\u003c/a> isn’t so different from what you’ll find at other soju bangs around the Bay, but the food comes out fast and it’s all solidly prepared — the stretchy, golden-brown cheese corn; the puffed-up steamed egg that tastes so juicy and savory spooned over white rice. We were especially fond of a spicy-sweet calamari stir-fry noodle dish, wherein the squid tentacle segments mirrored the thickness and bouncy chew of the accompanying udon noodles. And we were surprised by how rustic and homey the vegetable and seafood–laden doenjang (fermented soybean paste) stew was — a soothing counterpoint when everything else you’ve ordered is spicy or deep-fried.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Really, though, where Toyose shines is in its atmosphere, which only gets more raucous and high-energy later into the night. If you want to have a quiet chat, you can grab one of the partitioned-off booths in front, which even have roll-down bamboo blinds for extra privacy. But the whole back of the restaurant \u003ci>feels\u003c/i> like you’re packed inside a friend’s crowded basement or garage, all the tables jammed right next to each other, the volume of everyone’s collective conversations loud enough that you need to raise your voice to be heard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time we left, at around 11, every table was filled. And while it’s true that the diners at the table nearest to us didn’t appear to be Korean, or even Asian American, they’d done admirable work on a big pot of budae jjigae and a plate of spicy stir-fried pork. They, too, were having a good night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/toyose_sf/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Toyose\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday through Thursday, 6 p.m.–midnight, and Fridays and Saturdays 6 p.m.–2 a.m., at 3814 Noriega St. in San Francisco. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Toyose has been serving late-night Korean pub food in the Outer Sunset since 2001.",
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"title": "Toyose Is SF’s Great Korean Fried Chicken Garage | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13981038\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13981038\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Man devours stretchy cheesy corn while looking over a table crammed full of Korean pub food; his dining companion fills a mug with beer.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Toyose is one of San Francisco’s most popular late-night restaurants, serving classic Korean pub food until 2 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a little past 9 on a recent Friday night, we pulled up to what mostly looked like an ordinary house in the Outer Sunset, a few blocks from Ocean Beach. An angry cartoon chicken, lit up like a beacon next to the unmarked garage door, was the only real indication that this was a restaurant — let alone the most famous \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/late-night\">late-night dining\u003c/a> spot in the neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As soon as we stepped inside the converted garage restaurant, it was easy to see the charm. The dim, cramped dining room was vaguely reminiscent of the hold of an old-timey ship — ropes coiled around wooden beams, half-enebriated diners wobbling their way to the restroom, like they hadn’t quite gotten their sea legs yet. Every table had a big pitcher of Korean lager or a bottle of soju, and a mountainous spread of steaming hot dishes: fiery, gochujang-stained rice cakes; crispy chicken wings; and burbling stone cauldrons of kimchi and soybean paste soup — the kind of simple, satisfying meal you’d expect to find at a classic Korean soju pub.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>Even though it was our first time at Toyose, I’d been hearing about the place for years, sometimes by name, or just as often as “the Korean chicken garage” or simply The Garage. Over the years, no other Korean restaurant in the city had been recommended to me more frequently or more enthusiastically — and almost always by non-Koreans. That sounds like shade, though I don’t mean it that way: As far as I can tell, Toyose and Dan Sung Sa (aka Porno Palace, in Oakland) were two of the first restaurants to bring the spicy, soju-and-OB-fueled pleasures of \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/the-pub-life-korean-style-1/\">Korean pub life\u003c/a> to the Bay Area mainstream in the early aughts. And if the diverse, jam-packed and \u003ci>extremely happy\u003c/i> dining room we encountered during our meal at Toyose was any indication, the restaurant’s popularity has simply extended far beyond its original niche audience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is to say, Toyose belongs to all of San Francisco now. Or maybe it always has. And even after all these years, the restaurant is still cranking out huge portions of hot comfort food until 2 a.m. on the weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13981039\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13981039\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Exterior of Toyose restaurant at night. A sign with a cartoon bird is lit up next to an unmarked garage door.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located just blocks away from Ocean Beach, the restaurant has been an Outer Sunset staple since 2001. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The restaurant doesn’t really have a signature dish, though popular standards like its kimchi fried rice and seafood pancakes each have their legion of loyalists, quick to proclaim Toyose’s version the best in the city. My personal list of must-order items starts with the whole fried chicken, or tongdak — an entire bird cut up into big, bone-in pieces and then deep-fried. This is the OG style of Korean fried chicken, predating today’s more ubiquitous sweet and spicy sauce-slathered versions (though it’s still a staple \u003ca href=\"https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/sijang-tongdak\">at traditional markets\u003c/a> in Korea). Toyose’s tongdak is a sight to behold — a mountain of fried chicken! — and comes to the table scorchingly hot, with a thin, extra-crispy batter that shatters when you take a bite. It’s especially delicious dipped into the little dish of pepper salt that comes on the side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Toyose’s \u003ca href=\"https://496af86d-33ba-475e-bbdb-31e2a5abb6f7.filesusr.com/ugd/50518f_7d7113e602464ca1a01097eb9b493650.pdf\">menu\u003c/a> isn’t so different from what you’ll find at other soju bangs around the Bay, but the food comes out fast and it’s all solidly prepared — the stretchy, golden-brown cheese corn; the puffed-up steamed egg that tastes so juicy and savory spooned over white rice. We were especially fond of a spicy-sweet calamari stir-fry noodle dish, wherein the squid tentacle segments mirrored the thickness and bouncy chew of the accompanying udon noodles. And we were surprised by how rustic and homey the vegetable and seafood–laden doenjang (fermented soybean paste) stew was — a soothing counterpoint when everything else you’ve ordered is spicy or deep-fried.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Really, though, where Toyose shines is in its atmosphere, which only gets more raucous and high-energy later into the night. If you want to have a quiet chat, you can grab one of the partitioned-off booths in front, which even have roll-down bamboo blinds for extra privacy. But the whole back of the restaurant \u003ci>feels\u003c/i> like you’re packed inside a friend’s crowded basement or garage, all the tables jammed right next to each other, the volume of everyone’s collective conversations loud enough that you need to raise your voice to be heard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time we left, at around 11, every table was filled. And while it’s true that the diners at the table nearest to us didn’t appear to be Korean, or even Asian American, they’d done admirable work on a big pot of budae jjigae and a plate of spicy stir-fried pork. They, too, were having a good night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/toyose_sf/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Toyose\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday through Thursday, 6 p.m.–midnight, and Fridays and Saturdays 6 p.m.–2 a.m., at 3814 Noriega St. in San Francisco. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "asian-food-bay-area-malls-jagalchi-serramonte-stonestown-westfield-valley-fair",
"title": "Asian Food Is Coming to Save a Mall Near You",
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"headTitle": "Asian Food Is Coming to Save a Mall Near You | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]F[/dropcap]rom the 1990s golden age of suburban sprawl, one Bay Area mall remains iconic among \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/filipino\">Filipino\u003c/a> Americans: Serramonte Center in Daly City, aka “Serra-Manila.” Throwback to ‘94, when Jocelyn Enriquez dominated 106.1 KMEL airwaves with her freestyle track “I’ve Been Thinking About You” — the first Pinay from my generation to make it on the radio — and Serramonte was the place to go back-to-school shopping, ask for someone’s pager number, or hard-launch a budding romance by simply holding hands in public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a time before cell phones and GPS, if you got lost, you always met up at the fountain in the center of the mall, which was so powerful, it gushed up to the skylight like Old Faithful every half hour. During the busy holiday season, \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@danes_panes/video/7472969415697403182?_r=1&_t=ZP-8wuJkYr1Lqh\">it provided a resting place for tired shoppers and grandparents\u003c/a> looking to entertain the kids with a shiny nickel and a wish or two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But nostalgia couldn’t save Serramonte Center. The reality is that malls all over America have been dying for the past 25 years — pummeled by the Great Recession of 2008, mortally wounded by the rise of e-commerce via Amazon. For many of the Bay Area’s struggling malls, the pandemic was their swan song. At Serramonte, when the big box stores like Macy’s and Montgomery Ward started falling like dominoes, it was only a matter of time before the Spencer’s Gifts and Contempo Casuals followed suit. So, for years now, instead of packs of teens roaming the corridors, the mall has sat mostly empty. Its once-popular restaurants, like \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/food/history/article/This-Bay-Area-pizza-chain-rose-to-fame-in-the-16378714.php\">Pizza and Pipes\u003c/a> and Elephant Bar or the nearby Peppermill, fell by the wayside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"mceTemp\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>In 2017, the owners even hired consultants to redesign the mall based on feng shui principles, replacing the fountain with Zen-like koi ponds and live turtles on lily pads. None of it made much of a difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976955\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976955\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED.jpg\" alt='Entrance to a fancy new Korean grocery store. The sign reads, \"Jagalchi.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jagalchi’s arrival marks the beginning of a new — and much more Asian — chapter for Serramonte Center. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, Serramonte Center is hoping to pivot in the same direction as the small handful of Bay Area malls that \u003ci>are\u003c/i> still thriving: It’s going all in on Asian food. Earlier this spring the mall welcomed \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/jagalchi_official/?hl=en\">Jagalchi\u003c/a>, a glitzy Korean supermarket named after a famous fish market in Busan, sparking long lines in the spot where JCPenney once stood. And for the first time in a long time, it looked like there was hope for Serramonte to plot a comeback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malls all over the Bay Area – and \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/asian-malls-us-are-thriving-post-pandemic-bucking-retail-trend-rcna96276\">down in Southern California too\u003c/a> — have followed this same playbook. Stonestown Galleria on the west side of SF was the first place where I noticed it. While the retail apocalypse decimated other malls in the greater San Francisco region, from San Bruno’s ghost town Tanforan Mall to the COVID-crippled San Francisco Centre on Market Street, Stonestown has seen \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/sf-stonestown-asian-americans-18507747.php\">a resurgence\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976966\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976966\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Shopping carts bunched up at the entrance to a grocery store.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shopping carts at the entrance to Jagalchi. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>How did it do it? For starters, when the once-beloved Olive Garden and Chevys moved out, Stonestown didn’t replace them with other similarly generic chain restaurants. Instead, it began to welcome unique Asian specialty shops that served Japanese soufflé pancakes, fresh-made udon and Taiwanese fruit teas. It even added a revolving sushi bar, complete with robot servers, to warp you to Tokyo without the need for a passport. Not only did these new restaurants provide a draw, but the long lines and limited hours at places like Matcha Cafe Maiko gave an air of exclusivity that captured shoppers’ attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With Asian Americans composing a third of San Francisco’s population, and thanks to Stonestown’s prime location between the Sunset District and SF State, the pivot worked. And we’ve seen other malls follow the same formula: These days, San Jose’s Westfield Valley Fair — probably the most successful mall in the Bay Area — consists almost entirely of restaurants and retail shops geared toward Asian Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976960\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976960\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Shoppers inside an upscale Asian bakery.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Customers shop in Jagalchi’s bakery section. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976964\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976964\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Grocery store shelves full of different varieties of instant ramen.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Many different varieties of ramen. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When I was growing up, Daly City was mainly populated by middle-class Filipino families, who I can proudly say are part of a foodie-obsessed culture. Our geographical proximity to other Asian countries means we can eat Korean BBQ, Singaporean noodles and Vietnamese pho, and wash it down with Thai iced tea — all in the course of a day. Our craving for food is international, and there is no line too long or reservation system too complicated for us to not eventually dominate. So I’m betting that Serramonte Center leaning into its Filipino customers’ insatiable appetite will be the thing that finally makes us get off our couches to pay this old-school, once-forgotten mall another visit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In March, I was invited to Jagalchi’s press preview and got to peruse the aisles sans shoppers, noting what might attract folks from all parts of the Peninsula to its mall location. Though there is no H-Mart-style food court, the supermarket does have a Michelin-pedigreed restaurant onsite and a deli section that offers plenty of samples to try. Each area of the supermarket was spacious, with entire sections dedicated to specialty products that would be relegated to the one “ethnic” aisle at your local Safeway. It wasn’t like Pacific Super on Alemany (RIP), with its cramped aisles and pervasive fishy smell — that was actually my comfort zone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976957\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976957\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A shopper reaches for a package of Kewpie mayonnaise on the grocery store shelf.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The author reaches for a package of Kewpie mayonnaise. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976963\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976963\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Packaged grilled eel lunchbox from an Asian grocery store.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1265\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED-800x506.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED-1020x645.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED-160x101.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED-768x486.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED-1536x972.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED-1920x1214.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Grilled eel dupbap, one of the many prepared meals sold at Jagalchi’s deli section. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I stuffed my face with free kimbap and bulgogi samples like only an SF public school kid could. Meanwhile, the special press dinner at the sit-down restaurant, POGU, left much to be desired (it was all cold!). So I planned on coming back when Jagalchi was actually open to see how the rest of the mall fared in comparison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13956683,arts_13974308,arts_13939383']\u003c/span>A couple weekends ago, I pulled up to Serramonte’s food court parking lot and slowly made my way toward the other side of the mall, where Jagalchi was. What I noticed were more and more Asian food businesses I hadn’t seen before. First, I grabbed a still-warm madeleine muffin from Uncle Tetsu, which specializes in Japanese cheesecakes. To its right, a sign advertised the Izumi revolving sushi bar, coming soon. And as I reached the once-famous fountain, I saw it had been replaced by a mochi donut stand, what was left of the fountain now reduced to a mere trickle. The mall is now also home to the Taiwanese bakery chain 85C, a Korean hot dog kiosk and a stand selling trendy Dubai chocolate strawberry cups. And in the mall’s southern wing, where Jagalchi is housed, I was greeted by a huge billboard for the much-heralded Koi Palace dim sum restaurant, which is moving its flagship from its Gellert Boulevard location to the mall next year, nearly doubling its seating capacity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, Serramonte’s Asian pivot is already well underway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even on a regular weekend, Jagalchi was still bustling in comparison to the rest of Serramonte, and for now, foot traffic doesn’t seem to have increased much. Only time will tell if new businesses like the dim sum palace and the revolving sushi restaurant will draw customers to the rest of the mall, the way Stonestown’s specialty food court has.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976959\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976959\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A woman sits in a mall foot court holding a madeleine cake.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The author tries a madeleine from Uncle Tetsu, a Japanese bakery specializing in cheesecake. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One thing I did miss was the makeshift Sari Sari store that once stood where the mochi donut spot is now — a quaint Filipino snack stand in the center of the mall. With all the new Asian businesses moving in, none of them seem to cater specifically to the Filipino community. Moving forward, it would be nice to see some Fil-Am restaurants or dessert shops geared toward those day-one supporters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nostalgia aside, it’s clear that at least in the Bay Area, Asian Americans may be one of the last demographics that still loves going to the mall. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, they know how to do malls overseas in Asia, where the air-conditioned mega-complexes and adjoining grocers (and even \u003ca href=\"https://sg.news.yahoo.com/eat-pray-shop-philippines-embraces-mall-worshipping-203010484.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAB4A6PUvwqrEZsafK5zrckx99_8qlCUvh_kgR1GxXOKUk147gpiBiujysUm7v9waCCnOaZDTfYB3TEj-jwICJnETE9yxSPXVegjjiwes-P-mbcaIHJZDFgBpe9d9NXUBEuzKRwzeki7AKVIEOXCvIWy8HSmcEr4FM6tlrB9XBwS6\">churches\u003c/a>!) are designed to be a one-stop shop. So this Asian food renaissance seems to be the key to bringing people back to the mall, entire families in tow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other day I came across an \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6UECwqRuaf/?igsh=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA%3D%3D\">Instagram video about Serramonte Center\u003c/a> that ran down the Asian Dad fashion you can find there, harking back to the mall’s heyday as \u003cem>the\u003c/em> place to be for Filipinos like me. I was happy to be reminded that Serramonte will always have a place in Bay Area lore. May it be restored once again to its former glory — fountain be damned.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13921079/mom-tribute-dia-de-los-muertos-filipino-food-altar-frisco-foodies\">Rocky Rivera\u003c/a> is a journalist, emcee, author and activist from San Francisco. She has released four albums through her label, Beatrock Music, and a ten-volume mixtape series with DJ Roza — her most recent album,\u003c/em> Long Kiss Goodnight\u003cem>, dropped in Sept. 2024\u003c/em>.\u003cem> She released her first book, entitled \u003c/em>Snakeskin: Essays by Rocky Rivera, \u003cem>in 2021\u003c/em>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">F\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>rom the 1990s golden age of suburban sprawl, one Bay Area mall remains iconic among \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/filipino\">Filipino\u003c/a> Americans: Serramonte Center in Daly City, aka “Serra-Manila.” Throwback to ‘94, when Jocelyn Enriquez dominated 106.1 KMEL airwaves with her freestyle track “I’ve Been Thinking About You” — the first Pinay from my generation to make it on the radio — and Serramonte was the place to go back-to-school shopping, ask for someone’s pager number, or hard-launch a budding romance by simply holding hands in public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a time before cell phones and GPS, if you got lost, you always met up at the fountain in the center of the mall, which was so powerful, it gushed up to the skylight like Old Faithful every half hour. During the busy holiday season, \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@danes_panes/video/7472969415697403182?_r=1&_t=ZP-8wuJkYr1Lqh\">it provided a resting place for tired shoppers and grandparents\u003c/a> looking to entertain the kids with a shiny nickel and a wish or two.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But nostalgia couldn’t save Serramonte Center. The reality is that malls all over America have been dying for the past 25 years — pummeled by the Great Recession of 2008, mortally wounded by the rise of e-commerce via Amazon. For many of the Bay Area’s struggling malls, the pandemic was their swan song. At Serramonte, when the big box stores like Macy’s and Montgomery Ward started falling like dominoes, it was only a matter of time before the Spencer’s Gifts and Contempo Casuals followed suit. So, for years now, instead of packs of teens roaming the corridors, the mall has sat mostly empty. Its once-popular restaurants, like \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/food/history/article/This-Bay-Area-pizza-chain-rose-to-fame-in-the-16378714.php\">Pizza and Pipes\u003c/a> and Elephant Bar or the nearby Peppermill, fell by the wayside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"mceTemp\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>In 2017, the owners even hired consultants to redesign the mall based on feng shui principles, replacing the fountain with Zen-like koi ponds and live turtles on lily pads. None of it made much of a difference.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976955\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976955\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED.jpg\" alt='Entrance to a fancy new Korean grocery store. The sign reads, \"Jagalchi.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-1-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jagalchi’s arrival marks the beginning of a new — and much more Asian — chapter for Serramonte Center. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Now, Serramonte Center is hoping to pivot in the same direction as the small handful of Bay Area malls that \u003ci>are\u003c/i> still thriving: It’s going all in on Asian food. Earlier this spring the mall welcomed \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/jagalchi_official/?hl=en\">Jagalchi\u003c/a>, a glitzy Korean supermarket named after a famous fish market in Busan, sparking long lines in the spot where JCPenney once stood. And for the first time in a long time, it looked like there was hope for Serramonte to plot a comeback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Malls all over the Bay Area – and \u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/asian-malls-us-are-thriving-post-pandemic-bucking-retail-trend-rcna96276\">down in Southern California too\u003c/a> — have followed this same playbook. Stonestown Galleria on the west side of SF was the first place where I noticed it. While the retail apocalypse decimated other malls in the greater San Francisco region, from San Bruno’s ghost town Tanforan Mall to the COVID-crippled San Francisco Centre on Market Street, Stonestown has seen \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/sf-stonestown-asian-americans-18507747.php\">a resurgence\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976966\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976966\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Shopping carts bunched up at the entrance to a grocery store.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-49-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shopping carts at the entrance to Jagalchi. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>How did it do it? For starters, when the once-beloved Olive Garden and Chevys moved out, Stonestown didn’t replace them with other similarly generic chain restaurants. Instead, it began to welcome unique Asian specialty shops that served Japanese soufflé pancakes, fresh-made udon and Taiwanese fruit teas. It even added a revolving sushi bar, complete with robot servers, to warp you to Tokyo without the need for a passport. Not only did these new restaurants provide a draw, but the long lines and limited hours at places like Matcha Cafe Maiko gave an air of exclusivity that captured shoppers’ attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With Asian Americans composing a third of San Francisco’s population, and thanks to Stonestown’s prime location between the Sunset District and SF State, the pivot worked. And we’ve seen other malls follow the same formula: These days, San Jose’s Westfield Valley Fair — probably the most successful mall in the Bay Area — consists almost entirely of restaurants and retail shops geared toward Asian Americans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976960\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976960\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Shoppers inside an upscale Asian bakery.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-26-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Customers shop in Jagalchi’s bakery section. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976964\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976964\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Grocery store shelves full of different varieties of instant ramen.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-43-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Many different varieties of ramen. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When I was growing up, Daly City was mainly populated by middle-class Filipino families, who I can proudly say are part of a foodie-obsessed culture. Our geographical proximity to other Asian countries means we can eat Korean BBQ, Singaporean noodles and Vietnamese pho, and wash it down with Thai iced tea — all in the course of a day. Our craving for food is international, and there is no line too long or reservation system too complicated for us to not eventually dominate. So I’m betting that Serramonte Center leaning into its Filipino customers’ insatiable appetite will be the thing that finally makes us get off our couches to pay this old-school, once-forgotten mall another visit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In March, I was invited to Jagalchi’s press preview and got to peruse the aisles sans shoppers, noting what might attract folks from all parts of the Peninsula to its mall location. Though there is no H-Mart-style food court, the supermarket does have a Michelin-pedigreed restaurant onsite and a deli section that offers plenty of samples to try. Each area of the supermarket was spacious, with entire sections dedicated to specialty products that would be relegated to the one “ethnic” aisle at your local Safeway. It wasn’t like Pacific Super on Alemany (RIP), with its cramped aisles and pervasive fishy smell — that was actually my comfort zone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976957\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976957\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A shopper reaches for a package of Kewpie mayonnaise on the grocery store shelf.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-7-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The author reaches for a package of Kewpie mayonnaise. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976963\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976963\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Packaged grilled eel lunchbox from an Asian grocery store.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1265\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED-800x506.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED-1020x645.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED-160x101.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED-768x486.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED-1536x972.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-38-KQED-1920x1214.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Grilled eel dupbap, one of the many prepared meals sold at Jagalchi’s deli section. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I stuffed my face with free kimbap and bulgogi samples like only an SF public school kid could. Meanwhile, the special press dinner at the sit-down restaurant, POGU, left much to be desired (it was all cold!). So I planned on coming back when Jagalchi was actually open to see how the rest of the mall fared in comparison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>A couple weekends ago, I pulled up to Serramonte’s food court parking lot and slowly made my way toward the other side of the mall, where Jagalchi was. What I noticed were more and more Asian food businesses I hadn’t seen before. First, I grabbed a still-warm madeleine muffin from Uncle Tetsu, which specializes in Japanese cheesecakes. To its right, a sign advertised the Izumi revolving sushi bar, coming soon. And as I reached the once-famous fountain, I saw it had been replaced by a mochi donut stand, what was left of the fountain now reduced to a mere trickle. The mall is now also home to the Taiwanese bakery chain 85C, a Korean hot dog kiosk and a stand selling trendy Dubai chocolate strawberry cups. And in the mall’s southern wing, where Jagalchi is housed, I was greeted by a huge billboard for the much-heralded Koi Palace dim sum restaurant, which is moving its flagship from its Gellert Boulevard location to the mall next year, nearly doubling its seating capacity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, Serramonte’s Asian pivot is already well underway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even on a regular weekend, Jagalchi was still bustling in comparison to the rest of Serramonte, and for now, foot traffic doesn’t seem to have increased much. Only time will tell if new businesses like the dim sum palace and the revolving sushi restaurant will draw customers to the rest of the mall, the way Stonestown’s specialty food court has.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976959\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976959\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A woman sits in a mall foot court holding a madeleine cake.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/20250531_FRISCOFOODIESASIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The author tries a madeleine from Uncle Tetsu, a Japanese bakery specializing in cheesecake. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>One thing I did miss was the makeshift Sari Sari store that once stood where the mochi donut spot is now — a quaint Filipino snack stand in the center of the mall. With all the new Asian businesses moving in, none of them seem to cater specifically to the Filipino community. Moving forward, it would be nice to see some Fil-Am restaurants or dessert shops geared toward those day-one supporters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nostalgia aside, it’s clear that at least in the Bay Area, Asian Americans may be one of the last demographics that still loves going to the mall. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, they know how to do malls overseas in Asia, where the air-conditioned mega-complexes and adjoining grocers (and even \u003ca href=\"https://sg.news.yahoo.com/eat-pray-shop-philippines-embraces-mall-worshipping-203010484.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAB4A6PUvwqrEZsafK5zrckx99_8qlCUvh_kgR1GxXOKUk147gpiBiujysUm7v9waCCnOaZDTfYB3TEj-jwICJnETE9yxSPXVegjjiwes-P-mbcaIHJZDFgBpe9d9NXUBEuzKRwzeki7AKVIEOXCvIWy8HSmcEr4FM6tlrB9XBwS6\">churches\u003c/a>!) are designed to be a one-stop shop. So this Asian food renaissance seems to be the key to bringing people back to the mall, entire families in tow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other day I came across an \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6UECwqRuaf/?igsh=NjZiM2M3MzIxNA%3D%3D\">Instagram video about Serramonte Center\u003c/a> that ran down the Asian Dad fashion you can find there, harking back to the mall’s heyday as \u003cem>the\u003c/em> place to be for Filipinos like me. I was happy to be reminded that Serramonte will always have a place in Bay Area lore. May it be restored once again to its former glory — fountain be damned.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13921079/mom-tribute-dia-de-los-muertos-filipino-food-altar-frisco-foodies\">Rocky Rivera\u003c/a> is a journalist, emcee, author and activist from San Francisco. She has released four albums through her label, Beatrock Music, and a ten-volume mixtape series with DJ Roza — her most recent album,\u003c/em> Long Kiss Goodnight\u003cem>, dropped in Sept. 2024\u003c/em>.\u003cem> She released her first book, entitled \u003c/em>Snakeskin: Essays by Rocky Rivera, \u003cem>in 2021\u003c/em>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "best-korean-spicy-raw-crabs-ondam-santa-clara-late-night",
"title": "Korean Spicy Raw Crabs Are the Best Late-Night Snack",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13973438\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13973438\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a man devours a crab dripping with red sauce (with red stains all over his shirt) while his companion looks on.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of Ondam’s signature dishes is its spicy raw marinated crab. Located in Santa Clara, the Korean restaurant is open until 1 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It looked like the scene of an unspeakable crime. I pulled off my red-stained plastic gloves and surveyed the damage: the pile of crimson-soaked carcasses, limbs torn off, bits of raw flesh oozing out from open crevices. My hands were sticky (and a little bit sweet??) underneath the gloves, my pants also spattered bright blood red and possibly ruined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all, it was just an average night at \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ondam_official/?hl=en\">Ondam\u003c/a>, a newish late-night Korean restaurant in Santa Clara. We’d come in search of a rare delicacy, \u003ca href=\"https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/yangnyeom-gejang\">yangnyeom gejang\u003c/a>, or spicy raw marinated crabs — delicious victims of the aforementioned carnage. The dish has been a \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@hoemgirl/video/7218383423558257962\">viral hit\u003c/a> on Korean American TikTok and Instagram for a few years now, but has only recently started to appear on \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/crab-korean-k-banchan-18615070.php\">a handful of Bay Area menus\u003c/a>, often at restaurants, like Ondam, that specialize in booze-friendly fare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Late on a recent Friday night, the restaurant was jam-packed with Asian American twenty- and thirtysomethings, many of them chatting amiably in Korean. Even though about a dozen diners were ahead of us in line, we were seated quickly. The place is a model of efficiency, with a brisk, no-nonsense approach to service and iPad menus on every table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the raw marinated crabs are one of Ondam’s most \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/ondam-santa-clara?q=crab\">popular\u003c/a>, attention-grabbing dishes, we only saw them on a couple other tables. That’s probably because they’re a whole commitment, and you need to come properly prepared, ready to give them your full attention. At $35 a pop, they actually feel like a bargain because the portion size is tremendous — a giant Jenga tower of saucy, chili-stained blue crabs stacked high on the plate. There were so many that we lost count, but I must have eaten eight or 10 of the little crustaceans all by myself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The marinade consisted of gochugaru (Korean chili powder), garlic, fresh chilies and soy sauce, which combined with the crab’s juices to form a spicy-sweet paste. The shells were soft enough that you could bite right through to get at the meat inside. What I like to do, though, is put on those plastic gloves and use both hands to smoosh the crab until its soft, gelatinous flesh oozes out over a bowl of hot rice. What a treat it was to luxuriate in the natural sweetness of the raw crab, whose taste and jelly-like texture were reminiscent of really fresh shrimp sashimi. Mixed with the (mildly) fiery kick of that bright red sauce, it was almost impossible to stop eating. And even wearing gloves, you’re bound to make a mess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Would my doctor advise me to eat this at 11 o’clock at night on the regular? If this was wrong, I didn’t want to be right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13973440\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13973440\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: the exterior of a restaurant at night. The sign reads \"Ondam Korean Restaurant.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is a late-night hotspot, especially for Korean Americans in the Santa Clara area. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Even if you’re squeamish about the idea of eating raw crab, Ondam serves some of the tastiest Korean food we’ve had in the Bay Area in quite some time. In fact, most of the tables around us were ordering more typical Korean pub standards — fried chicken, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13961328/bay-pocha-late-night-korean-pub-bossam-army-stew-sf\">army stew\u003c/a> and tteokbokki. Based on our initial exploration of the menu, this is a restaurant that does the classics well. The complimentary banchan spread, for instance, was nothing but bangers: a tangle of soft, uncommonly savory potato matchsticks; perfectly seasoned sauteed spinach; a mound of creamy (and surprisingly addicting!) macaroni salad flecked with sweet corn kernels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the restaurant also boasts a wealth of dishes that are harder to find in the Bay Area. For instance, it has an extensive selection of kalguksu, or Korean noodle soups featuring handmade knife-cut noodles. The clam kalguksu we ordered came overloaded with clams and mussels, and the broth had a wonderfully deep and soothing flavor, having extracted all of the shellfish’s briny sweetness. On a cold night, it warmed us up from the inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13972834,arts_13957143,arts_13965215']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>There was a sweet, garlicky version of yukhoe, or Korean beef tartare, crowned with a golden egg yolk and served with crunchy slivers of Asian pear. And there was a whole menu of sotbap, a rice dish that’s a lesser known cousin of bibimbap, where all of the ingredients get cooked together in one pot. The steak sotbap turned out to be one of the most luxurious dishes of the night. The steak itself was cut into large, substantial chunks that were seared to a perfect, extraordinarily juicy medium-rare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saved for a future visit: the six different jeongol (hot pot) dishes, and the elaborate spread of raw meats or seafood that get \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ondam_official/p/C3zRYBLuCUo/\">cooked gently in a cypress wood steamer\u003c/a> and served with an array of dipping sauces — a preparation I haven’t seen at any other Korean restaurant in the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might find one or two of these lesser-known items from Ondam’s menu at Korean restaurants in Oakland or San Francisco, but \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20181212124912/https://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/different-kind-of-koreatown\">only in Santa Clara\u003c/a> is it typical to find such a wide array. And based on how crowded the dining room was during our visit, right now Ondam is \u003ci>the\u003c/i> place to be in Santa Clara, at least if you’re looking for a late-night feast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Do learn from our mistakes, though, especially if the raw crabs are at the top of your agenda. Don’t wear any clothing you wouldn’t want getting dirty. And consider ordering just one or two dishes to start out, so you can focus on working your way through those crabs before the table gets cluttered and overcrowded. At that point, every bowl and utensil on the table might already be stained red, and one false move will send your sauce-splattered chopsticks flying through the air … and onto your favorite trousers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not that we wouldn’t do it all again in a second.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ondam_official/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Ondam\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m.–midnight, and Friday through Saturday 11 a.m.–1 a.m. at 2450 El Camino Real in Santa Clara.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Ondam, in Santa Clara, serves one of the best versions until 1 a.m. on weekends.",
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"title": "The Best Korean Spicy Raw Crabs at Ondam in Santa Clara | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13973438\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13973438\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a man devours a crab dripping with red sauce (with red stains all over his shirt) while his companion looks on.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of Ondam’s signature dishes is its spicy raw marinated crab. Located in Santa Clara, the Korean restaurant is open until 1 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It looked like the scene of an unspeakable crime. I pulled off my red-stained plastic gloves and surveyed the damage: the pile of crimson-soaked carcasses, limbs torn off, bits of raw flesh oozing out from open crevices. My hands were sticky (and a little bit sweet??) underneath the gloves, my pants also spattered bright blood red and possibly ruined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all, it was just an average night at \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ondam_official/?hl=en\">Ondam\u003c/a>, a newish late-night Korean restaurant in Santa Clara. We’d come in search of a rare delicacy, \u003ca href=\"https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/yangnyeom-gejang\">yangnyeom gejang\u003c/a>, or spicy raw marinated crabs — delicious victims of the aforementioned carnage. The dish has been a \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@hoemgirl/video/7218383423558257962\">viral hit\u003c/a> on Korean American TikTok and Instagram for a few years now, but has only recently started to appear on \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/crab-korean-k-banchan-18615070.php\">a handful of Bay Area menus\u003c/a>, often at restaurants, like Ondam, that specialize in booze-friendly fare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Late on a recent Friday night, the restaurant was jam-packed with Asian American twenty- and thirtysomethings, many of them chatting amiably in Korean. Even though about a dozen diners were ahead of us in line, we were seated quickly. The place is a model of efficiency, with a brisk, no-nonsense approach to service and iPad menus on every table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the raw marinated crabs are one of Ondam’s most \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/ondam-santa-clara?q=crab\">popular\u003c/a>, attention-grabbing dishes, we only saw them on a couple other tables. That’s probably because they’re a whole commitment, and you need to come properly prepared, ready to give them your full attention. At $35 a pop, they actually feel like a bargain because the portion size is tremendous — a giant Jenga tower of saucy, chili-stained blue crabs stacked high on the plate. There were so many that we lost count, but I must have eaten eight or 10 of the little crustaceans all by myself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The marinade consisted of gochugaru (Korean chili powder), garlic, fresh chilies and soy sauce, which combined with the crab’s juices to form a spicy-sweet paste. The shells were soft enough that you could bite right through to get at the meat inside. What I like to do, though, is put on those plastic gloves and use both hands to smoosh the crab until its soft, gelatinous flesh oozes out over a bowl of hot rice. What a treat it was to luxuriate in the natural sweetness of the raw crab, whose taste and jelly-like texture were reminiscent of really fresh shrimp sashimi. Mixed with the (mildly) fiery kick of that bright red sauce, it was almost impossible to stop eating. And even wearing gloves, you’re bound to make a mess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Would my doctor advise me to eat this at 11 o’clock at night on the regular? If this was wrong, I didn’t want to be right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13973440\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13973440\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: the exterior of a restaurant at night. The sign reads \"Ondam Korean Restaurant.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is a late-night hotspot, especially for Korean Americans in the Santa Clara area. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Even if you’re squeamish about the idea of eating raw crab, Ondam serves some of the tastiest Korean food we’ve had in the Bay Area in quite some time. In fact, most of the tables around us were ordering more typical Korean pub standards — fried chicken, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13961328/bay-pocha-late-night-korean-pub-bossam-army-stew-sf\">army stew\u003c/a> and tteokbokki. Based on our initial exploration of the menu, this is a restaurant that does the classics well. The complimentary banchan spread, for instance, was nothing but bangers: a tangle of soft, uncommonly savory potato matchsticks; perfectly seasoned sauteed spinach; a mound of creamy (and surprisingly addicting!) macaroni salad flecked with sweet corn kernels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the restaurant also boasts a wealth of dishes that are harder to find in the Bay Area. For instance, it has an extensive selection of kalguksu, or Korean noodle soups featuring handmade knife-cut noodles. The clam kalguksu we ordered came overloaded with clams and mussels, and the broth had a wonderfully deep and soothing flavor, having extracted all of the shellfish’s briny sweetness. On a cold night, it warmed us up from the inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>There was a sweet, garlicky version of yukhoe, or Korean beef tartare, crowned with a golden egg yolk and served with crunchy slivers of Asian pear. And there was a whole menu of sotbap, a rice dish that’s a lesser known cousin of bibimbap, where all of the ingredients get cooked together in one pot. The steak sotbap turned out to be one of the most luxurious dishes of the night. The steak itself was cut into large, substantial chunks that were seared to a perfect, extraordinarily juicy medium-rare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saved for a future visit: the six different jeongol (hot pot) dishes, and the elaborate spread of raw meats or seafood that get \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ondam_official/p/C3zRYBLuCUo/\">cooked gently in a cypress wood steamer\u003c/a> and served with an array of dipping sauces — a preparation I haven’t seen at any other Korean restaurant in the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might find one or two of these lesser-known items from Ondam’s menu at Korean restaurants in Oakland or San Francisco, but \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20181212124912/https://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/different-kind-of-koreatown\">only in Santa Clara\u003c/a> is it typical to find such a wide array. And based on how crowded the dining room was during our visit, right now Ondam is \u003ci>the\u003c/i> place to be in Santa Clara, at least if you’re looking for a late-night feast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Do learn from our mistakes, though, especially if the raw crabs are at the top of your agenda. Don’t wear any clothing you wouldn’t want getting dirty. And consider ordering just one or two dishes to start out, so you can focus on working your way through those crabs before the table gets cluttered and overcrowded. At that point, every bowl and utensil on the table might already be stained red, and one false move will send your sauce-splattered chopsticks flying through the air … and onto your favorite trousers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not that we wouldn’t do it all again in a second.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ondam_official/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Ondam\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m.–midnight, and Friday through Saturday 11 a.m.–1 a.m. at 2450 El Camino Real in Santa Clara.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "bay-pocha-late-night-korean-pub-bossam-army-stew-sf",
"title": "Bay Pocha Was Made for a Late-Night Feast With Friends",
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"headTitle": "Bay Pocha Was Made for a Late-Night Feast With Friends | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961332\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961332\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: One diner at a Korean restaurant shoves a lettuce wrap into his mouth while another eats noodles from a pot of stew.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bay Pocha sets itself apart from the crowd of Korean pubs by serving big, shareable, celebratory dishes like its bossam (pork belly wraps). The San Francisco restaurant is open until 1 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in college, my friends and I would eat at the Fontainbleau Diner in Piscataway, New Jersey, every Thursday night after our weekly club meeting. This meant 10 or 20 of us, mostly Asian American, rolling in at 10 p.m. to commandeer a row of pushed-together two-tops. We were loud and giddy, reveling in our Monte Cristos, chicken fingers and root beer floats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, here in the Bay Area, a lot of the late-night restaurants aren’t built for that kind of large-group merrymaking — not when you’re squished up at a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13957143/late-night-japanese-whisky-highball-karaage-sunnyvale-nokori\">tiny bar counter\u003c/a> or, in some cases, there \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13959808/golden-boy-pizza-north-beach-sf-late-night\">isn’t any seating at all\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://baypocha.menu11.com/\">Bay Pocha\u003c/a>, a Korean pub on Ocean Avenue near Stonestown, is the exception that proves the rule. Even though it isn’t a particularly big restaurant, a long communal table, spacious enough to fit 20 people, runs down the center of the dining room, and the menu skews toward hearty, shareable dishes: bubbling stews and hot pots, and big platters piled high with braised and stir-fried meats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Named after Korea’s famed “pocha” (or \u003ca href=\"https://la.eater.com/2020/8/13/21366722/koreatown-pojangmacha-street-food-parking-look-outdoor-dining-los-angeles\">pojangmacha\u003c/a>) street carts and semi-outdoor food stalls, Bay Pocha has a similar aesthetic to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13952823/zzan-korean-fried-chicken-late-night-san-francisco\">other Korean pubs in the Bay Area\u003c/a> with its cheery K-pop soundtrack and neon-lit signs advertising soju and Korean beer brands. On weekends, it’s open until 1 a.m. and, on a recent Friday night, it only seemed to get busier and more rambunctious as the night got later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The broad menu runs through the greatest hits of the kind of booze-friendly food you would find at your standard Bay Area soju bang: Korean fried chicken, cheese corn, tteokbokki. But where Bay Pocha sets itself apart is in its selection of big, celebratory dishes — the kind you’re surprised and delighted to be able to share with a group of friends at 11 o’clock at night. That includes harder-to-find dishes like spicy stir-fried chicken feet and jokbal, a.k.a. braised pig trotters, which Bay Pocha offers in both spicy and non-spicy versions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961334\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961334\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Facade of a Korean restaurant; the sign reads, \"Bay Pocha.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is perfect for a late meal with a big group of friends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But we had mainly come for the hidden star of the menu, the bossam, or braised pork belly wraps, which is probably the dish Bay Pocha is best known for, even though it isn’t listed on the menu — you have to know to ask for it. It’s a huge platter of tender, fatty meat, cut into thick slices and fanned out like a beautiful flower, with a salad of thinly slivered scallions piled in the center. Make sure you also order the ssam set — a plate of lettuce, raw and pickled jalapeños, raw garlic and spicy ssamjang sauce — so that you can eat the pork belly Korean-style, as lettuce wraps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13961051,arts_13959808,arts_13956218']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>For each ssam, you’ll want a couple of slices of pork, a tangle of scallion salad, a smear of ssamjang, maybe some kimchi and, if you’re like me, an unconscionable amount of garlic. Build each wrap on your plate or do it “freestyle,” the way I learned from watching too many Korean dramas, holding the lettuce leaf in front of your mouth like you’re setting a trap, then \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@plumsoju/video/6799690626007977221?lang=en\">chopsticking all of the other ingredients into the leaf in one smooth motion\u003c/a>. Take it down in one bite if you can. Either way, the result is delicious — unctuous and meaty, spicy and sharp, with enough freshness from the lettuce that you don’t feel weighed down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other thing the restaurant does well is its ample selection of shareable stews and hot pots, the most striking of which is the army stew, or budae jjigae, a Korean pub staple whose use of American processed foods has its \u003ca href=\"https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/budae-jjigae-army-stew-spam\">roots in the U.S. post-war military occupation of South Korea\u003c/a>. At Bay Pocha, they light up a portable gas burner, then bring the big pot of bubbling red broth to your table to finish cooking. The soup comes loaded with spicy pork, Spam, sliced up hot dogs, onions, kimchi, tofu, two different kinds of rice cakes, and a big block of instant ramen topped with two slices of American cheese. It is \u003ci>a lot\u003c/i>. But for us, it was pure comfort food. The salty, spicy broth got more and more flavorful as the night went on, and with some white rice on the side to soak up the soup, we stretched the leftovers into two more meals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As if on cue, toward the end of the night, a boisterous, Cantonese-speaking adult volleyball or baseball team in matching red jackets came in and spread themselves out at the long communal table — the same kind of squad I’d go on those late-night diner runs with in college. They were celebrating, or consoling themselves, with a bubbling pot of galbijjim (short rib stew) that the server ceremoniously scorched with a blow torch until the cheese on top was brown-speckled and melty. I wasn’t sure how their night had gone up until then, but it seemed clear that they were ending it in the best possible way.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/baypocha/\">\u003ci>Bay Pocha\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is located at 2642 Ocean Ave. in San Francisco. The restaurant is open Monday through Thursday from 5 p.m.–midnight, Friday and Saturday 5 p.m.–1 a.m. and Sunday 5–11:30 p.m.; it’s also open for lunch 11 a.m.–2 p.m. daily.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Bay Pocha in SF Is a Korean Pub Made for Late-Night Feasts | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961332\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961332\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: One diner at a Korean restaurant shoves a lettuce wrap into his mouth while another eats noodles from a pot of stew.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bay Pocha sets itself apart from the crowd of Korean pubs by serving big, shareable, celebratory dishes like its bossam (pork belly wraps). The San Francisco restaurant is open until 1 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in college, my friends and I would eat at the Fontainbleau Diner in Piscataway, New Jersey, every Thursday night after our weekly club meeting. This meant 10 or 20 of us, mostly Asian American, rolling in at 10 p.m. to commandeer a row of pushed-together two-tops. We were loud and giddy, reveling in our Monte Cristos, chicken fingers and root beer floats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, here in the Bay Area, a lot of the late-night restaurants aren’t built for that kind of large-group merrymaking — not when you’re squished up at a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13957143/late-night-japanese-whisky-highball-karaage-sunnyvale-nokori\">tiny bar counter\u003c/a> or, in some cases, there \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13959808/golden-boy-pizza-north-beach-sf-late-night\">isn’t any seating at all\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://baypocha.menu11.com/\">Bay Pocha\u003c/a>, a Korean pub on Ocean Avenue near Stonestown, is the exception that proves the rule. Even though it isn’t a particularly big restaurant, a long communal table, spacious enough to fit 20 people, runs down the center of the dining room, and the menu skews toward hearty, shareable dishes: bubbling stews and hot pots, and big platters piled high with braised and stir-fried meats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Named after Korea’s famed “pocha” (or \u003ca href=\"https://la.eater.com/2020/8/13/21366722/koreatown-pojangmacha-street-food-parking-look-outdoor-dining-los-angeles\">pojangmacha\u003c/a>) street carts and semi-outdoor food stalls, Bay Pocha has a similar aesthetic to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13952823/zzan-korean-fried-chicken-late-night-san-francisco\">other Korean pubs in the Bay Area\u003c/a> with its cheery K-pop soundtrack and neon-lit signs advertising soju and Korean beer brands. On weekends, it’s open until 1 a.m. and, on a recent Friday night, it only seemed to get busier and more rambunctious as the night got later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The broad menu runs through the greatest hits of the kind of booze-friendly food you would find at your standard Bay Area soju bang: Korean fried chicken, cheese corn, tteokbokki. But where Bay Pocha sets itself apart is in its selection of big, celebratory dishes — the kind you’re surprised and delighted to be able to share with a group of friends at 11 o’clock at night. That includes harder-to-find dishes like spicy stir-fried chicken feet and jokbal, a.k.a. braised pig trotters, which Bay Pocha offers in both spicy and non-spicy versions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961334\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961334\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Facade of a Korean restaurant; the sign reads, \"Bay Pocha.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is perfect for a late meal with a big group of friends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But we had mainly come for the hidden star of the menu, the bossam, or braised pork belly wraps, which is probably the dish Bay Pocha is best known for, even though it isn’t listed on the menu — you have to know to ask for it. It’s a huge platter of tender, fatty meat, cut into thick slices and fanned out like a beautiful flower, with a salad of thinly slivered scallions piled in the center. Make sure you also order the ssam set — a plate of lettuce, raw and pickled jalapeños, raw garlic and spicy ssamjang sauce — so that you can eat the pork belly Korean-style, as lettuce wraps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>For each ssam, you’ll want a couple of slices of pork, a tangle of scallion salad, a smear of ssamjang, maybe some kimchi and, if you’re like me, an unconscionable amount of garlic. Build each wrap on your plate or do it “freestyle,” the way I learned from watching too many Korean dramas, holding the lettuce leaf in front of your mouth like you’re setting a trap, then \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@plumsoju/video/6799690626007977221?lang=en\">chopsticking all of the other ingredients into the leaf in one smooth motion\u003c/a>. Take it down in one bite if you can. Either way, the result is delicious — unctuous and meaty, spicy and sharp, with enough freshness from the lettuce that you don’t feel weighed down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other thing the restaurant does well is its ample selection of shareable stews and hot pots, the most striking of which is the army stew, or budae jjigae, a Korean pub staple whose use of American processed foods has its \u003ca href=\"https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/budae-jjigae-army-stew-spam\">roots in the U.S. post-war military occupation of South Korea\u003c/a>. At Bay Pocha, they light up a portable gas burner, then bring the big pot of bubbling red broth to your table to finish cooking. The soup comes loaded with spicy pork, Spam, sliced up hot dogs, onions, kimchi, tofu, two different kinds of rice cakes, and a big block of instant ramen topped with two slices of American cheese. It is \u003ci>a lot\u003c/i>. But for us, it was pure comfort food. The salty, spicy broth got more and more flavorful as the night went on, and with some white rice on the side to soak up the soup, we stretched the leftovers into two more meals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As if on cue, toward the end of the night, a boisterous, Cantonese-speaking adult volleyball or baseball team in matching red jackets came in and spread themselves out at the long communal table — the same kind of squad I’d go on those late-night diner runs with in college. They were celebrating, or consoling themselves, with a bubbling pot of galbijjim (short rib stew) that the server ceremoniously scorched with a blow torch until the cheese on top was brown-speckled and melty. I wasn’t sure how their night had gone up until then, but it seemed clear that they were ending it in the best possible way.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/baypocha/\">\u003ci>Bay Pocha\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is located at 2642 Ocean Ave. in San Francisco. The restaurant is open Monday through Thursday from 5 p.m.–midnight, Friday and Saturday 5 p.m.–1 a.m. and Sunday 5–11:30 p.m.; it’s also open for lunch 11 a.m.–2 p.m. daily.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Korean Fried Chicken Is the Perfect Late-Night Bar Snack",
"headTitle": "Korean Fried Chicken Is the Perfect Late-Night Bar Snack | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13952836\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13952836\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration of a man eating Korean chicken wings in a restaurant. He's blowing air out of his mouth because the chicken is too hot.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zzan’s piping-hot Korean fried chicken wings and other bar snacks are among the best late-night options in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and artist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Korean food isn’t necessarily San Francisco’s strong suit — not compared to what you can find on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland or in Santa Clara’s sprawling, suburban Koreatown, where the options are vast and better by several orders of magnitude.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13952384,arts_13950866,arts_13951914']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>But if you find yourself hungry in San Francisco after 10 o’clock on a weeknight, Korean might be your very best bet. That’s thanks to the slew of soju bangs, or Korean pubs, that are sprinkled all over the western part of the city, and in and around the Tenderloin. As a rule, these spots blast K-pop, sell large quantities of cold beer and soju, and serve spicy bar snacks and some of the best fried chicken around. If it’s late enough at night, they might be the only place in the neighborhood that’s still open.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s how we found ourselves in \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/zzan_sf/\">Zzan\u003c/a>, a low-key, slightly industrial-looking pub on Post Street, right on the edge of the Tenderloin. (It’s part of a little hub of late-night restaurants, with both Pinecrest Diner and Cocobang, another late-night Korean fried chicken specialist, right around the corner.) There’s a big white screen on the wall where they project K-pop and Korean hip-hop videos, but at least during our visit, the vibe was more chill than rambunctious — less big groups of salarymen getting hammered, more VC bro lecturing his date on international banking. (Diagonal mouth emoji.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13952917\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13952917\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN.jpg\" alt='Illustration of the yellow-gold exterior of a restaurant, lit up at night. The sign reads, \"ZZAN.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located on the edge of the Tenderloin, Zzan is part of a small hub of restaurants in the neighborhood that are open late every night. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Zzan’s main virtues are its fried chicken wings and more-fun-than-average selection of pub snacks, from cheese corn and giant cheese omelets to Spam omurice and fancified instant ramyun. My favorite of these are the creamy rice cakes, a carbonara-like dish that includes bacon, a hard-boiled egg, tubular rice cakes and a velvety, mildly spicy-sweet cream sauce that’s nearly impossible to stop eating — the overall effect falls somewhere between penne alla vodka and lobster bisque. That orange-pink sauce is delicious with the extra-chewy rice cakes; or ladled over white rice, with the egg yolk mashed in for extra richness; or simply spooned directly into your mouth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the fried chicken, just know that it arrives at the table literally too hot to eat — burn-your-mouth hot. But once it’s cooled a little bit, it has the kind of impeccably crunchy skin and plump, juicy flesh that hits the spot at any time of day, but especially at midnight, after you’ve had a couple of drinks. If you order your garlic soy sauce on the side, as we did, know that those perfectly fried wings come almost entirely unseasoned, so you really do want to dunk it in that sauce — which wasn’t overly gloppy or sweet, as we’d feared it might be. It was just right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look, Zzan might not be in the drive-all-the-way-to-Santa-Clara-on-a-whim tier of Korean food. But late on a Thursday night in the city, it was exactly the meal we needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Zzan is open 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. daily at 643 Post St., San Francisco.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13952836\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13952836\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration of a man eating Korean chicken wings in a restaurant. He's blowing air out of his mouth because the chicken is too hot.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zzan’s piping-hot Korean fried chicken wings and other bar snacks are among the best late-night options in San Francisco. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and artist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Korean food isn’t necessarily San Francisco’s strong suit — not compared to what you can find on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland or in Santa Clara’s sprawling, suburban Koreatown, where the options are vast and better by several orders of magnitude.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>But if you find yourself hungry in San Francisco after 10 o’clock on a weeknight, Korean might be your very best bet. That’s thanks to the slew of soju bangs, or Korean pubs, that are sprinkled all over the western part of the city, and in and around the Tenderloin. As a rule, these spots blast K-pop, sell large quantities of cold beer and soju, and serve spicy bar snacks and some of the best fried chicken around. If it’s late enough at night, they might be the only place in the neighborhood that’s still open.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s how we found ourselves in \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/zzan_sf/\">Zzan\u003c/a>, a low-key, slightly industrial-looking pub on Post Street, right on the edge of the Tenderloin. (It’s part of a little hub of late-night restaurants, with both Pinecrest Diner and Cocobang, another late-night Korean fried chicken specialist, right around the corner.) There’s a big white screen on the wall where they project K-pop and Korean hip-hop videos, but at least during our visit, the vibe was more chill than rambunctious — less big groups of salarymen getting hammered, more VC bro lecturing his date on international banking. (Diagonal mouth emoji.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13952917\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13952917\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN.jpg\" alt='Illustration of the yellow-gold exterior of a restaurant, lit up at night. The sign reads, \"ZZAN.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/ZZAN-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located on the edge of the Tenderloin, Zzan is part of a small hub of restaurants in the neighborhood that are open late every night. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Zzan’s main virtues are its fried chicken wings and more-fun-than-average selection of pub snacks, from cheese corn and giant cheese omelets to Spam omurice and fancified instant ramyun. My favorite of these are the creamy rice cakes, a carbonara-like dish that includes bacon, a hard-boiled egg, tubular rice cakes and a velvety, mildly spicy-sweet cream sauce that’s nearly impossible to stop eating — the overall effect falls somewhere between penne alla vodka and lobster bisque. That orange-pink sauce is delicious with the extra-chewy rice cakes; or ladled over white rice, with the egg yolk mashed in for extra richness; or simply spooned directly into your mouth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the fried chicken, just know that it arrives at the table literally too hot to eat — burn-your-mouth hot. But once it’s cooled a little bit, it has the kind of impeccably crunchy skin and plump, juicy flesh that hits the spot at any time of day, but especially at midnight, after you’ve had a couple of drinks. If you order your garlic soy sauce on the side, as we did, know that those perfectly fried wings come almost entirely unseasoned, so you really do want to dunk it in that sauce — which wasn’t overly gloppy or sweet, as we’d feared it might be. It was just right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look, Zzan might not be in the drive-all-the-way-to-Santa-Clara-on-a-whim tier of Korean food. But late on a Thursday night in the city, it was exactly the meal we needed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Zzan is open 4 p.m. to 1 a.m. daily at 643 Post St., San Francisco.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "jay-caspian-kang-asian-food-san-jose-hella-hungry",
"title": "Jay Caspian Kang Loves Bay Area Food — But Isn’t Shy About Bashing It",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ci>¡Hella Hungry! is a series of interviews with Bay Area foodmakers exploring the region’s culinary innovations through the mouth of a first-generation local.\u003c/i>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Inside \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://gangnamtofuusa.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gangnam Tofu\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a destination-worthy Korean restaurant in an otherwise unremarkable El Cerrito strip mall, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/jaycaspiankang?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jay Caspian Kang\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> orders a round of shareable dishes — galbi, honey-cheese fried chicken and budae jjigae (a wartime-era stew of mixed meats and noodles) — for us to split. As the lunch crowd pours in behind him, Kang tells me why he likes Gangnam over most other Asian eateries in the area: “I just want to eat standard Korean food that’s prepared well.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Though he surprisingly prefers his spicy food mild, the Korean-born \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://goodbye.substack.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">podcast host\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, novelist and \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">New Yorker \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">staff writer serves plenty of hot takes on everything from the shortcomings of technology (he’s an aspiring luddite) to the most underrated rap albums of the past quarter century (he stands with Mos Def in the internet feud against Drake). And when it comes to the hypocrisies of Bay Area politics, he especially \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/london-breeds-cynical-swing-to-the-right\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">doesn’t hold back\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13950802\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13950802\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Best known for articles he’s written for national publications such as the New Yorker, Kang has lived in Berkeley since 2019. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Having settled in Berkeley after years of living in New York City and Los Angeles, Kang has developed a genuine appreciation for the Bay Area’s microcultures. Despite growing up on the East Coast and often writing about topics of national interest, Kang has in many ways become a quintessential Northern Californian: In his free time, you might find him surfing or wandering the aisles at Berkeley Bowl.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And yet, he’s also someone who brings a worldly outsider’s unflinching perspective to controversial Bay Area topics such as the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-does-californias-homeless-population-actually-look-like\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">housing crisis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/magazine/where-does-affirmative-action-leave-asian-americans.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">affirmative action\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. He’ll even let you know that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/jaycaspiankang/status/1740961971498074151\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the Asian food in Las Vegas is better than the Bay Area’s\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Perhaps \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13950363/keith-lee-tiktok-oakland-sf-bay-area-struggles\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">our region needs that tough love\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> now more than ever.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While talking to the sports-loving dad and low-key hip-hop historian about the highs and lows of Bay Area living, I remembered why I love this quirky region so deeply, despite its complex truths. Here’s what everyone’s favorite \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/jaycaspiankang\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tyler Hansborough evangelist\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.houseofstrauss.com/p/hos-jay-caspian-kang\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reformed online troll\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> has to say about the state of the Bay — and its food offerings — in these precarious times.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">********\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Chazaro: You were born in Korea, grew up in North Carolina and have lived in a ton of places. How long have you been in the Bay Area?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jay Caspian Kang: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I went to college in New England, and then I went to New York for grad school. But after that, I moved out to California and lived here in San Francisco for six, seven years. I was working as a high school teacher. Then I moved to L.A., back to New York, and then right before the pandemic we moved back out here to Berkeley. It’s been four years now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13950796\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13950796\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED.jpg\" alt='Hand pointing to the \"honey cheese chicken\" on Korean restaurant menu.' width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Perusing the menu at GangNam Tofu . \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>You’ve written about \u003c/b>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/magazine/writing-the-wave.html\">\u003cb>your passion for surfing\u003c/b>\u003c/a>\u003cb> in the Bay. What draws you to that?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m not a good surfer, but yeah, I spend most of my time thinking about surfing. For years, I just went to Ocean Beach all the time, and you get used to it and, you know, you learn how to avoid trouble. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I go once or twice a week. That’s the only way you can do it: You have to prioritize it. Or else, if you don’t, then you don’t ever go. If I get a Zoom call, I’ll just cancel that. You have to live with some of the consequences after, but surfing is very necessary for my mental well-being.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>It sounds like you’ve reached some kind of Zen mindstate. Did you achieve that when you were living in Los Angeles?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t really like to drive. And I’ve never liked Hollywood culture. I just find that the people I vibe most with are generally up here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Who do you think is a good example of the Bay Area’s creativity and open-mindedness?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Look at MC Hammer. He grew up doing that boogaloo style of dancing in East Oakland. He downloaded that as a kid. He blew it up into worldwide fame in a modified kind of way. Now that he’s old, his presence on social media is just showing all these old videos of guys from his neighborhood dancing. I find it amazing that he’s willing to go back and show these kids from his block who were his influences, and he’s basically showing how that made him who he is. That’s community, music coming out of community. He’s interesting because he’s like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909788/mc-hammer-oakland-redman-too-short-crips-louis-burrell-mc-serch-hit-e40\">most Oakland dude ever\u003c/a>, but he’s not always seen as being affiliated with that (laughs). \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13950797\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13950797\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kang and KQED reporter Alan Chazaro put in their order. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Bay is weird like that. There’s a lot of different characters here.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is weird. It’s interesting how someone like E-40 has become this sort of mascot as a rapper. He’s the dude. He’s like an entire persona. And people love him because he goes to all the games. I’ve never seen Too $hort at a game. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Did you grow up listening to a lot of Bay Area rap out on the East Coast?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I grew up listening to whatever you imagine a 44-year-old man would listen to (laughs). A Tribe Called Quest. Wu-Tang. Mobb Deep. Then you had the Bay Area, so there was like “Blowjob Betty” or whatever, and you would listen to it, and it was crazy because it was just so nasty. Luniz, Del [the Funky Homosapien]. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Del is the one I personally listened to the most. I still listen to him. The Deltron 3030 album is brilliant. The production on that album is \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">fucking\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> crazy. The whole concept is weird. [Bay Area producer] Dan the Automator had been messing with concept albums for a while. That was just a cool kind of rap with enough label support to make weird shit. That was before MF DOOM and all those dudes. It’s like Del imagining the future, and Del is awesome. He kills it. That album is low-key one of the 20 best rap albums ever. I hesitate to put it higher because is it as important as, say, KRS One? I don’t know. Listening to those KRS One albums can feel like you’re just doing your homework. I bet more people enjoyed Deltron 3030.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What’s more Bay Area than an Asian American producer teaming up with a nerdy Black dude from East Oakland to make a futuristic album about a fictional dystopian society?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Totally. And these guys were getting deeply influenced by the shit that’s happening with \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13812554/how-daly-citys-filipino-mobile-dj-scene-changed-hip-hop-forever\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Filipino DJs in Daly City\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Every city has some version of that, but it’s so interesting in the Bay because it really is so multiracial. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>I wonder if the Bay Area still represents that as much as it once did. You commented on the whole \u003c/b>\u003cb>fiasco with TikTok food critic Keith Lee’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13950363/keith-lee-tiktok-oakland-sf-bay-area-struggles\">recent Bay Area visit\u003c/a>\u003c/b>\u003cb>. He said the Bay is “not a place for tourists” right now. What do you think about that?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s no question that the Bay Area is going through a difficult time right now. If Keith Lee went to the Tenderloin and parts of East Oakland, which it seems like he did — or even if he went to 24th and Mission, which is highly trafficked — people when they come to the Bay Area and see that, it’s shocking to them. You have to be real about it. You don’t see that in New York. You see it in L.A. but it’s mostly in the Skid Row area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Bay Area has had these issues for a long time, but it was more contained and it didn’t feel like it was as big of a problem. When I moved to San Francisco around 2002, I got off BART at 16th Street. I was like, \u003cem>Wow, this is kind of wild\u003c/em>. And now that has really expanded to a lot of places where a lot more people go. So in the Bay, you get these people coming for conferences or just visiting to see Fisherman’s Wharf, and chances are the hotel is going to be in Union Square or directly in the Tenderloin. So when you leave your hotel, you’re seeing really bad shit. That shocks outsiders and contributes to an unfair narrative. If you put all of the hotels in L.A. on Skid Row, everyone would be saying the same thing about L.A. But at the same time, I think it’s good to bring attention to this problem: We have completely out-of-control homelessness in one of the richest cities in America, and that paradox and contradiction is impossible to resolve.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The way out of it is going to be super messy and will create reactionary elements. People like [\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Fransicko \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">author] Michael Shellenberger believe all these \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Michael-Shellenberger-s-narrative-of-California-17172493.php\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">drug addicts should just be put in jail.\u003c/span>\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://invisiblepeople.tv/san-francisco-mayor-london-breed-joins-calls-to-punish-homeless-people-overturn-martin-v-boise/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">London Breed sometimes feels that way, too\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But I think overall, those people are underestimating that the San Francisco Bay Area is a very progressive place. They will never accept us locking up these people. And that’s a good thing. The idea that you’re going to lock up the poor and throw away the key, it’s just not going to happen. Right now we’re in a period of extremes: of extreme cynicism and despair. And for good reason, because it’s fucking bad, you know? But I still wouldn’t trade places with anyone to live somewhere else in this country. It’s a trade-off.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13950799\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13950799\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gangnam Tofu’s version of budae jjigae is a soft tofu stew loaded with sausage and noodles. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Despite our struggles, there’s so much to discover here and so many pockets of rich culture. You actually \u003c/b>\u003cb>had a take\u003c/b>\u003cb> that most of the \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/jaycaspiankang/status/1740965943998927231\">Asian food in the Bay Area is bad\u003c/a>, outside of in San Jose. I’m not sure many outsiders, or even locals, would voice that.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So here’s the thing. This is just my theory. Immigrant food is only really good in a certain time period after the people who are making it have immigrated here. For example, new Chinese populations in the United States will have much better food in their restaurants, and in those areas where they are living, than older, established Chinese populations. And the reason for that is very simple. It’s that food on the mainland continues to evolve, right? But the immigrants who have been living here for decades don’t. They’re frozen in time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13904835,arts_13950363,arts_13938479']My parents left Korea in 1978, and they never go back except for a little visit throughout 25 years. And by 1999, their understanding of Korean cuisine is basically frozen in 1978, because every single other person who owns a Korean restaurant also came around that same time, because there was a big wave of immigration from ’75 to ’79. I know that in San Francisco you have a multi-generational embedded Chinese population. But at this point, like, what are we even eating? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of Chinese restaurants [in San Francisco] feel like they’re a movie set or something. It’s very charming, but it’s very old school. In the Richmond, there are places you can find that are exceptions to that. But right now, the cradle for the best Chinese food is from Cupertino to Mountain View, all around Silicon Valley. And the reason for that is because there are a lot of new Chinese immigrants that are coming to work there. In addition to that, there’s this \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13904913/vietnamese-drinks-boba-che-guide-san-jose\">Vietnamese mall culture in San Jose\u003c/a>. It’s getting a little old-fashioned, but it’s still super vibrant. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[pullquote size=\"large\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Jay Caspian Kang\"]‘Food on the mainland continues to evolve, right? But the immigrants who have been living here for decades don’t. They’re frozen in time.’[/pullquote]I just don’t find anything like that out here in the East Bay. We have taqueros in people’s backyards, and that’s very distinct and fully immigrant-driven, so that feels fresh in the cycle. But with Korean food, you have all these restaurants, but the issue is that they’ve all been here for so long that nothing has been updated. They’re basically selling food from the ’80s — but Korean food updates, even the standard dishes. When something comes straight from there and lands here, it feels exciting. That doesn’t happen as much up here as it does around San Jose. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13904835/san-jose-immigrant-food\">The restaurants down there are fire\u003c/a>. Unfortunately I can’t go to Cupertino for lunch.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13950795\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13950795\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Two men seated across from each other inside a Korean restaurant.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Many Korean restaurants in the Bay Area are selling a version of Korean food that has been frozen in time since the 1980s, Kang says. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>So what are you working on next? What’s on your mind as a locally-based journalist with a national platform?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I write a lot about homelessness, so I’d like to continue to write and think about that. There’s tiny amounts of progress finally being made. It’s actually better than it was. For years here, we kind of felt like it could only get worse. But there are tiny indications things are getting a little bit better, that some of these interventions are working. People are just going to have to get used to the idea that the hotel down the street from their house where nobody ever stayed, that’s now a place for the people in the encampment that you didn’t like. They now live there. If you don’t like that, then I’m sorry. Obviously it’s going to take many, many years. And so following that is very interesting to me. They actually are reversing this thing that seems impossible to fix. I’m also going to write a lot about the upcoming election. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>You’ve had a decades-long career in this industry, which is currently struggling as \u003c/b>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11973593/l-a-times-layoffs-decimate-journalists-of-color\">\u003cb>layoffs are decimating newsrooms across the country\u003c/b>\u003c/a>\u003cb>. What keeps you going?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I feel the need to write a lot. I used to write very infrequently, and I found that I actually enjoyed writing much more. It’s a way to organize one’s life. Having something to put out and putting it out feels good. Sometimes it’s not great, because you might only have a week to do it. But I’m learning to be fine with that and understanding the job is not to make everything perfect. I’ve really embraced that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"wDYxhc\" lang=\"en-US\" data-attrid=\"kc:/local:lu attribute list\" data-md=\"205\" data-hveid=\"CB4QAA\" data-ved=\"2ahUKEwiGt_a2mIOEAxV_LUQIHYdKB3wQ1rkBegQIHhAA\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"TLYLSe MaBy9\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"CJQ04\">\u003cem>Gangnam Tofu Korean Cuisine (11740 San Pablo Ave. Suite C, El Cerrito) is open Mon.–Fri. from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m.; Sat. and Sun. from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003ci>¡Hella Hungry! is a series of interviews with Bay Area foodmakers exploring the region’s culinary innovations through the mouth of a first-generation local.\u003c/i>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Inside \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://gangnamtofuusa.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gangnam Tofu\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a destination-worthy Korean restaurant in an otherwise unremarkable El Cerrito strip mall, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/jaycaspiankang?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jay Caspian Kang\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> orders a round of shareable dishes — galbi, honey-cheese fried chicken and budae jjigae (a wartime-era stew of mixed meats and noodles) — for us to split. As the lunch crowd pours in behind him, Kang tells me why he likes Gangnam over most other Asian eateries in the area: “I just want to eat standard Korean food that’s prepared well.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Though he surprisingly prefers his spicy food mild, the Korean-born \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://goodbye.substack.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">podcast host\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, novelist and \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">New Yorker \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">staff writer serves plenty of hot takes on everything from the shortcomings of technology (he’s an aspiring luddite) to the most underrated rap albums of the past quarter century (he stands with Mos Def in the internet feud against Drake). And when it comes to the hypocrisies of Bay Area politics, he especially \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/london-breeds-cynical-swing-to-the-right\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">doesn’t hold back\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13950802\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13950802\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-09-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Best known for articles he’s written for national publications such as the New Yorker, Kang has lived in Berkeley since 2019. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Having settled in Berkeley after years of living in New York City and Los Angeles, Kang has developed a genuine appreciation for the Bay Area’s microcultures. Despite growing up on the East Coast and often writing about topics of national interest, Kang has in many ways become a quintessential Northern Californian: In his free time, you might find him surfing or wandering the aisles at Berkeley Bowl.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And yet, he’s also someone who brings a worldly outsider’s unflinching perspective to controversial Bay Area topics such as the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-does-californias-homeless-population-actually-look-like\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">housing crisis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/magazine/where-does-affirmative-action-leave-asian-americans.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">affirmative action\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. He’ll even let you know that \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/jaycaspiankang/status/1740961971498074151\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the Asian food in Las Vegas is better than the Bay Area’s\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Perhaps \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13950363/keith-lee-tiktok-oakland-sf-bay-area-struggles\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">our region needs that tough love\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> now more than ever.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While talking to the sports-loving dad and low-key hip-hop historian about the highs and lows of Bay Area living, I remembered why I love this quirky region so deeply, despite its complex truths. Here’s what everyone’s favorite \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/jaycaspiankang\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tyler Hansborough evangelist\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.houseofstrauss.com/p/hos-jay-caspian-kang\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reformed online troll\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> has to say about the state of the Bay — and its food offerings — in these precarious times.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">********\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Chazaro: You were born in Korea, grew up in North Carolina and have lived in a ton of places. How long have you been in the Bay Area?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Jay Caspian Kang: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I went to college in New England, and then I went to New York for grad school. But after that, I moved out to California and lived here in San Francisco for six, seven years. I was working as a high school teacher. Then I moved to L.A., back to New York, and then right before the pandemic we moved back out here to Berkeley. It’s been four years now. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13950796\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13950796\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED.jpg\" alt='Hand pointing to the \"honey cheese chicken\" on Korean restaurant menu.' width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-03-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Perusing the menu at GangNam Tofu . \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>You’ve written about \u003c/b>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/magazine/writing-the-wave.html\">\u003cb>your passion for surfing\u003c/b>\u003c/a>\u003cb> in the Bay. What draws you to that?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I’m not a good surfer, but yeah, I spend most of my time thinking about surfing. For years, I just went to Ocean Beach all the time, and you get used to it and, you know, you learn how to avoid trouble. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I go once or twice a week. That’s the only way you can do it: You have to prioritize it. Or else, if you don’t, then you don’t ever go. If I get a Zoom call, I’ll just cancel that. You have to live with some of the consequences after, but surfing is very necessary for my mental well-being.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>It sounds like you’ve reached some kind of Zen mindstate. Did you achieve that when you were living in Los Angeles?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don’t really like to drive. And I’ve never liked Hollywood culture. I just find that the people I vibe most with are generally up here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Who do you think is a good example of the Bay Area’s creativity and open-mindedness?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Look at MC Hammer. He grew up doing that boogaloo style of dancing in East Oakland. He downloaded that as a kid. He blew it up into worldwide fame in a modified kind of way. Now that he’s old, his presence on social media is just showing all these old videos of guys from his neighborhood dancing. I find it amazing that he’s willing to go back and show these kids from his block who were his influences, and he’s basically showing how that made him who he is. That’s community, music coming out of community. He’s interesting because he’s like the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13909788/mc-hammer-oakland-redman-too-short-crips-louis-burrell-mc-serch-hit-e40\">most Oakland dude ever\u003c/a>, but he’s not always seen as being affiliated with that (laughs). \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13950797\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13950797\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-04-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kang and KQED reporter Alan Chazaro put in their order. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>The Bay is weird like that. There’s a lot of different characters here.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is weird. It’s interesting how someone like E-40 has become this sort of mascot as a rapper. He’s the dude. He’s like an entire persona. And people love him because he goes to all the games. I’ve never seen Too $hort at a game. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Did you grow up listening to a lot of Bay Area rap out on the East Coast?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I grew up listening to whatever you imagine a 44-year-old man would listen to (laughs). A Tribe Called Quest. Wu-Tang. Mobb Deep. Then you had the Bay Area, so there was like “Blowjob Betty” or whatever, and you would listen to it, and it was crazy because it was just so nasty. Luniz, Del [the Funky Homosapien]. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Del is the one I personally listened to the most. I still listen to him. The Deltron 3030 album is brilliant. The production on that album is \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">fucking\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> crazy. The whole concept is weird. [Bay Area producer] Dan the Automator had been messing with concept albums for a while. That was just a cool kind of rap with enough label support to make weird shit. That was before MF DOOM and all those dudes. It’s like Del imagining the future, and Del is awesome. He kills it. That album is low-key one of the 20 best rap albums ever. I hesitate to put it higher because is it as important as, say, KRS One? I don’t know. Listening to those KRS One albums can feel like you’re just doing your homework. I bet more people enjoyed Deltron 3030.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What’s more Bay Area than an Asian American producer teaming up with a nerdy Black dude from East Oakland to make a futuristic album about a fictional dystopian society?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Totally. And these guys were getting deeply influenced by the shit that’s happening with \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13812554/how-daly-citys-filipino-mobile-dj-scene-changed-hip-hop-forever\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Filipino DJs in Daly City\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Every city has some version of that, but it’s so interesting in the Bay because it really is so multiracial. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>I wonder if the Bay Area still represents that as much as it once did. You commented on the whole \u003c/b>\u003cb>fiasco with TikTok food critic Keith Lee’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13950363/keith-lee-tiktok-oakland-sf-bay-area-struggles\">recent Bay Area visit\u003c/a>\u003c/b>\u003cb>. He said the Bay is “not a place for tourists” right now. What do you think about that?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s no question that the Bay Area is going through a difficult time right now. If Keith Lee went to the Tenderloin and parts of East Oakland, which it seems like he did — or even if he went to 24th and Mission, which is highly trafficked — people when they come to the Bay Area and see that, it’s shocking to them. You have to be real about it. You don’t see that in New York. You see it in L.A. but it’s mostly in the Skid Row area. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Bay Area has had these issues for a long time, but it was more contained and it didn’t feel like it was as big of a problem. When I moved to San Francisco around 2002, I got off BART at 16th Street. I was like, \u003cem>Wow, this is kind of wild\u003c/em>. And now that has really expanded to a lot of places where a lot more people go. So in the Bay, you get these people coming for conferences or just visiting to see Fisherman’s Wharf, and chances are the hotel is going to be in Union Square or directly in the Tenderloin. So when you leave your hotel, you’re seeing really bad shit. That shocks outsiders and contributes to an unfair narrative. If you put all of the hotels in L.A. on Skid Row, everyone would be saying the same thing about L.A. But at the same time, I think it’s good to bring attention to this problem: We have completely out-of-control homelessness in one of the richest cities in America, and that paradox and contradiction is impossible to resolve.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The way out of it is going to be super messy and will create reactionary elements. People like [\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Fransicko \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">author] Michael Shellenberger believe all these \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Michael-Shellenberger-s-narrative-of-California-17172493.php\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">drug addicts should just be put in jail.\u003c/span>\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://invisiblepeople.tv/san-francisco-mayor-london-breed-joins-calls-to-punish-homeless-people-overturn-martin-v-boise/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">London Breed sometimes feels that way, too\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. But I think overall, those people are underestimating that the San Francisco Bay Area is a very progressive place. They will never accept us locking up these people. And that’s a good thing. The idea that you’re going to lock up the poor and throw away the key, it’s just not going to happen. Right now we’re in a period of extremes: of extreme cynicism and despair. And for good reason, because it’s fucking bad, you know? But I still wouldn’t trade places with anyone to live somewhere else in this country. It’s a trade-off.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13950799\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13950799\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-06-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gangnam Tofu’s version of budae jjigae is a soft tofu stew loaded with sausage and noodles. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Despite our struggles, there’s so much to discover here and so many pockets of rich culture. You actually \u003c/b>\u003cb>had a take\u003c/b>\u003cb> that most of the \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/jaycaspiankang/status/1740965943998927231\">Asian food in the Bay Area is bad\u003c/a>, outside of in San Jose. I’m not sure many outsiders, or even locals, would voice that.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So here’s the thing. This is just my theory. Immigrant food is only really good in a certain time period after the people who are making it have immigrated here. For example, new Chinese populations in the United States will have much better food in their restaurants, and in those areas where they are living, than older, established Chinese populations. And the reason for that is very simple. It’s that food on the mainland continues to evolve, right? But the immigrants who have been living here for decades don’t. They’re frozen in time. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>My parents left Korea in 1978, and they never go back except for a little visit throughout 25 years. And by 1999, their understanding of Korean cuisine is basically frozen in 1978, because every single other person who owns a Korean restaurant also came around that same time, because there was a big wave of immigration from ’75 to ’79. I know that in San Francisco you have a multi-generational embedded Chinese population. But at this point, like, what are we even eating? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of Chinese restaurants [in San Francisco] feel like they’re a movie set or something. It’s very charming, but it’s very old school. In the Richmond, there are places you can find that are exceptions to that. But right now, the cradle for the best Chinese food is from Cupertino to Mountain View, all around Silicon Valley. And the reason for that is because there are a lot of new Chinese immigrants that are coming to work there. In addition to that, there’s this \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13904913/vietnamese-drinks-boba-che-guide-san-jose\">Vietnamese mall culture in San Jose\u003c/a>. It’s getting a little old-fashioned, but it’s still super vibrant. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘Food on the mainland continues to evolve, right? But the immigrants who have been living here for decades don’t. They’re frozen in time.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>I just don’t find anything like that out here in the East Bay. We have taqueros in people’s backyards, and that’s very distinct and fully immigrant-driven, so that feels fresh in the cycle. But with Korean food, you have all these restaurants, but the issue is that they’ve all been here for so long that nothing has been updated. They’re basically selling food from the ’80s — but Korean food updates, even the standard dishes. When something comes straight from there and lands here, it feels exciting. That doesn’t happen as much up here as it does around San Jose. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13904835/san-jose-immigrant-food\">The restaurants down there are fire\u003c/a>. Unfortunately I can’t go to Cupertino for lunch.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13950795\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13950795\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Two men seated across from each other inside a Korean restaurant.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/01/240122-GAGNAM-TOFU-MD-02-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Many Korean restaurants in the Bay Area are selling a version of Korean food that has been frozen in time since the 1980s, Kang says. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>So what are you working on next? What’s on your mind as a locally-based journalist with a national platform?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I write a lot about homelessness, so I’d like to continue to write and think about that. There’s tiny amounts of progress finally being made. It’s actually better than it was. For years here, we kind of felt like it could only get worse. But there are tiny indications things are getting a little bit better, that some of these interventions are working. People are just going to have to get used to the idea that the hotel down the street from their house where nobody ever stayed, that’s now a place for the people in the encampment that you didn’t like. They now live there. If you don’t like that, then I’m sorry. Obviously it’s going to take many, many years. And so following that is very interesting to me. They actually are reversing this thing that seems impossible to fix. I’m also going to write a lot about the upcoming election. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>You’ve had a decades-long career in this industry, which is currently struggling as \u003c/b>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11973593/l-a-times-layoffs-decimate-journalists-of-color\">\u003cb>layoffs are decimating newsrooms across the country\u003c/b>\u003c/a>\u003cb>. What keeps you going?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I feel the need to write a lot. I used to write very infrequently, and I found that I actually enjoyed writing much more. It’s a way to organize one’s life. Having something to put out and putting it out feels good. Sometimes it’s not great, because you might only have a week to do it. But I’m learning to be fine with that and understanding the job is not to make everything perfect. I’ve really embraced that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"wDYxhc\" lang=\"en-US\" data-attrid=\"kc:/local:lu attribute list\" data-md=\"205\" data-hveid=\"CB4QAA\" data-ved=\"2ahUKEwiGt_a2mIOEAxV_LUQIHYdKB3wQ1rkBegQIHhAA\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"TLYLSe MaBy9\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"CJQ04\">\u003cem>Gangnam Tofu Korean Cuisine (11740 San Pablo Ave. Suite C, El Cerrito) is open Mon.–Fri. from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5 to 9 p.m.; Sat. and Sun. from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.\u003c/em>\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>For the past two years, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ssiyagi/\">Ssi Ya Gi\u003c/a> has been fine-tuning its unique program for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13930456/ssi-ya-gi-korean-immigrant-elders-cafe-ohlone-food-memories-pandemic-berkeley\">community outreach\u003c/a>: The organization’s volunteers have met with dozens of Korean elders in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, listening as they shared stories about their most cherished food memories — the boiled whale meat sold in one elder’s hometown, or the deliciously “shiny and greasy” rice that another elder harvested from his family’s rice farm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then they’ve turned those stories into \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssiyagi.com/portfolio-2\">zines\u003c/a>, preserving them as a record of history and a gorgeous art object that can be shared with the next generation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s proved to be a winning formula for an organization born out of a desire to alleviate the profound loneliness that so many monolingual, homebound seniors in the Korean community experienced during the height of the pandemic: As it turns out, there’s no better way to connect with a person than to \u003ci>really\u003c/i> listen to their life story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Ssi Ya Gi is using its distinctive blend of food, elder outreach, oral history and DIY artmaking to build bridges with another community: Chinese seniors in Oakland Chinatown. On Thursday, Sept. 14, elders from the Bay Area’s Chinese and Korean communities will come together at Chinatown’s Lincoln Square Park for a night of cross-cultural story sharing and food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Co-sponsored by the AAPI community–focused art nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://www.cutfruitcollective.org/\">Cut Fruit Collective\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.chinatownmemories.org/\">Oakland Chinatown Oral History Project\u003c/a>, the event will celebrate both Chuseok (the Korean harvest festival) and Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First and foremost, it will be a night of storytelling, as the seniors share their personal — and often delicious — memories of Chuseok and Mid-Autumn Festival. In advance of the event, the three participating organizations worked with Asian American artists to create five new zines based on the Chuseok and Mid-Autumn Festival stories of Korean and Chinese elders in Oakland. The zines are trilingual (translated into English, Korean and Chinese), with titles like \u003ci>Lee Lee’s Mid-Autumn Festival \u003c/i>and \u003ci>Syeon Pyeon With Love\u003c/i>. Attendees can receive copies of the zines in exchange for a donation to support the community work of Ssi Ya Gi and Cut Fruit Collective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934657\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934657\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines.jpg\" alt=\"Five illustrated zines with Korean, English and Chinese text, shown against a blue background.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The five new zines preserve the food memories of Korean and Chinese seniors in Oakland. The stories have been translated into English, Korean and Chinese. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Cut Fruit Collective)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There will be a hands-on component as well. Ssi Ya Gi is creating a food altar, inspired by the \u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/21507882/korean-chuseok-2020-holiday-feast-celebrating-during-covid-19-pandemic\">charye table\u003c/a> that’s traditionally set during Chuseok as a memorial for one’s ancestors. Attendees will be invited to write or draw their own food memory, or a memory of a loved one, on a wishing ribbon that they can place on the altar. In exchange, they’ll get a sweet reward: a Cantonese-style mooncake, songpyeon (steamed rice cake shaped like a half moon) or mungwort bean powder injeolmi (another kind of steamed rice cake) — all treats traditionally served during the Chinese and Korean harvest festivals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13930456,arts_13924280,arts_13908103']\u003c/span>Last fall, Ssi Ya Gi hosted \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13930456/ssi-ya-gi-korean-immigrant-elders-cafe-ohlone-food-memories-pandemic-berkeley\">a similar cross-cultural feast at Cafe Ohlone\u003c/a>, built around the Korean and Ohlone communities’ mutual appreciation of ingredients such as acorn and fernbrake. When I spoke to the organization’s founders at the time, they stressed that they wanted the dinner itself to be a gift to the elders who participated in the project — a way to thank them for passing on their hard-earned wisdom and their memories, which would otherwise be lost to history. Likewise, the Korean and Chinese elders who participated this time will break bread together at a more intimate private listening supper prior to the public celebration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, afterwards, the rest of us will have a chance to thank them too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Chuseok and Mid-Autumn Festival story sharing event will take place on Thursday, Sept. 14, 5–8 p.m. at Lincoln Square Park (261 11th St.) in Oakland Chinatown. The free event is part of Oakland Chinatown’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.friendsoflincolnsquarepark.org/blog/summernights2023\">\u003ci>Lincoln Summer Nights\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> series. Online \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://givebutter.com/dLHeJj\">\u003ci>RSVP\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is optional.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For the past two years, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ssiyagi/\">Ssi Ya Gi\u003c/a> has been fine-tuning its unique program for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13930456/ssi-ya-gi-korean-immigrant-elders-cafe-ohlone-food-memories-pandemic-berkeley\">community outreach\u003c/a>: The organization’s volunteers have met with dozens of Korean elders in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, listening as they shared stories about their most cherished food memories — the boiled whale meat sold in one elder’s hometown, or the deliciously “shiny and greasy” rice that another elder harvested from his family’s rice farm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then they’ve turned those stories into \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssiyagi.com/portfolio-2\">zines\u003c/a>, preserving them as a record of history and a gorgeous art object that can be shared with the next generation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s proved to be a winning formula for an organization born out of a desire to alleviate the profound loneliness that so many monolingual, homebound seniors in the Korean community experienced during the height of the pandemic: As it turns out, there’s no better way to connect with a person than to \u003ci>really\u003c/i> listen to their life story.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Ssi Ya Gi is using its distinctive blend of food, elder outreach, oral history and DIY artmaking to build bridges with another community: Chinese seniors in Oakland Chinatown. On Thursday, Sept. 14, elders from the Bay Area’s Chinese and Korean communities will come together at Chinatown’s Lincoln Square Park for a night of cross-cultural story sharing and food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Co-sponsored by the AAPI community–focused art nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://www.cutfruitcollective.org/\">Cut Fruit Collective\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.chinatownmemories.org/\">Oakland Chinatown Oral History Project\u003c/a>, the event will celebrate both Chuseok (the Korean harvest festival) and Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First and foremost, it will be a night of storytelling, as the seniors share their personal — and often delicious — memories of Chuseok and Mid-Autumn Festival. In advance of the event, the three participating organizations worked with Asian American artists to create five new zines based on the Chuseok and Mid-Autumn Festival stories of Korean and Chinese elders in Oakland. The zines are trilingual (translated into English, Korean and Chinese), with titles like \u003ci>Lee Lee’s Mid-Autumn Festival \u003c/i>and \u003ci>Syeon Pyeon With Love\u003c/i>. Attendees can receive copies of the zines in exchange for a donation to support the community work of Ssi Ya Gi and Cut Fruit Collective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13934657\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13934657\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines.jpg\" alt=\"Five illustrated zines with Korean, English and Chinese text, shown against a blue background.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/Chuseok-Mid-Autumn-Zines-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The five new zines preserve the food memories of Korean and Chinese seniors in Oakland. The stories have been translated into English, Korean and Chinese. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Cut Fruit Collective)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There will be a hands-on component as well. Ssi Ya Gi is creating a food altar, inspired by the \u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/21507882/korean-chuseok-2020-holiday-feast-celebrating-during-covid-19-pandemic\">charye table\u003c/a> that’s traditionally set during Chuseok as a memorial for one’s ancestors. Attendees will be invited to write or draw their own food memory, or a memory of a loved one, on a wishing ribbon that they can place on the altar. In exchange, they’ll get a sweet reward: a Cantonese-style mooncake, songpyeon (steamed rice cake shaped like a half moon) or mungwort bean powder injeolmi (another kind of steamed rice cake) — all treats traditionally served during the Chinese and Korean harvest festivals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>Last fall, Ssi Ya Gi hosted \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13930456/ssi-ya-gi-korean-immigrant-elders-cafe-ohlone-food-memories-pandemic-berkeley\">a similar cross-cultural feast at Cafe Ohlone\u003c/a>, built around the Korean and Ohlone communities’ mutual appreciation of ingredients such as acorn and fernbrake. When I spoke to the organization’s founders at the time, they stressed that they wanted the dinner itself to be a gift to the elders who participated in the project — a way to thank them for passing on their hard-earned wisdom and their memories, which would otherwise be lost to history. Likewise, the Korean and Chinese elders who participated this time will break bread together at a more intimate private listening supper prior to the public celebration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, afterwards, the rest of us will have a chance to thank them too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Chuseok and Mid-Autumn Festival story sharing event will take place on Thursday, Sept. 14, 5–8 p.m. at Lincoln Square Park (261 11th St.) in Oakland Chinatown. The free event is part of Oakland Chinatown’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.friendsoflincolnsquarepark.org/blog/summernights2023\">\u003ci>Lincoln Summer Nights\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> series. Online \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://givebutter.com/dLHeJj\">\u003ci>RSVP\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is optional.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Acorns Aren’t the Only Thing Korean and Ohlone Elders Have in Common",
"headTitle": "Acorns Aren’t the Only Thing Korean and Ohlone Elders Have in Common | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n a crisp Friday afternoon in November, an intimate group of community elders gathered at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/cafe-ohlone\">Cafe Ohlone\u003c/a> for a multi-course outdoor feast made with ingredients native to Northern California: acorn flour and fernbrake, pickleweed and sweet huckleberries. Founders Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino greeted the group in the Ohlone Chochenyo language, and as the dappled Berkeley sunlight gave way to evening, they spoke of how important it was for colonized peoples to keep their cultures alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many ways, it was a typical dinner service at the Bay Area’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13912976/cafe-ohlone-hearst-museum-opening-singing-trees\">only dedicated Ohlone restaurant\u003c/a>, except for one notable difference: Nearly all of the diners in attendance were Korean elders, many of them monolingual. They had come to Cafe Ohlone to break bread with Ohlone neighbors they had met for the first time that day — to savor both the Korean \u003ci>and\u003c/i> Ohlone ways of preparing shared cultural ingredients such as acorn, and to hear and share stories that showed the many points of commonality between their two communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We both value respect for our elders, making sure that they’re taken care of and loved, and that their wisdom is carried on into the future,” Medina said in his introductory remarks. “Our peoples have also survived hard times, and so we always keep our cultures close.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930528\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930528\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088.jpg\" alt=\"Two indigenous Ohlone men address a group of elderly Koreans while a female Korean translator looks on from the side. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Medina (right) spoke of the many points of connection between the Korean and Ohlone cultures, including a respect for elders and resilience in the face of hardship. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The “story sharing supper” was a collaboration between Cafe Ohlone and a Korean American community organization called \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssiyagi.com/\">Ssi Ya Gi\u003c/a> (pronounced “shee-ya-ghee,” meaning “Seed Story” in Korean), whose members are based in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. It was the second in-person event of its kind — and the first in the Bay Area — for a group born out of the heightened sense of isolation that many homebound, elderly Korean immigrants experienced during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hannah Pae, a Los Angeles-based landscape designer who co-founded Ssi Ya Gi in 2021, recalls how her own grandmother was living at a nursing home when the first wave of COVID hit the United States. “During lockdown, when my family could not visit her, her health deteriorated. She wasn’t eating Korean food; people in the nursing home couldn’t speak Korean,” Pae says. “It was just heartbreaking to feel so helpless and see her health decline so rapidly because of the isolation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930531\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930531\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115.jpg\" alt=\"On a dining table, a boat-shaped paper tray of Korean acorn jellies molded into the shape of actual acorns. Decorative lemons and walnuts in their shell form a centerpiece for the table.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Acorn was served two ways: traditional Ohlone chilled acorn soup and, pictured here, Korean acorn jellies topped with soy sauce and scallions. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Pae’s grandmother wound up passing away not long after the start of the pandemic. Driven by that painful experience, Pae started talking to Hyunch Sung, a landscape design colleague based in the East Bay, about putting together a project that would allow young Korean Americans to forge a “human-to-human connection” with seniors in their community to help alleviate some of that isolation. Eventually, the two of them teamed up a handful of other like-minded folks: plant designer Ginny Hwang, Yoon Ju Ellie Lee of the diasporic Korean arts collective \u003ca href=\"https://gyopo.us/\">GYOPO\u003c/a>, and community nonprofit consultant Grace Jiyun Lee, who’d spent those early months of the pandemic organizing hot meal deliveries for Korean elders through San Francisco’s Korean American Community Foundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We knew we wanted to connect over food and plants,” Lee says. “We wanted to do this for our seniors but also for ourselves — as a learning for us and also [to share] information that would otherwise be lost with other interested community members.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930530\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930530\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031.jpg\" alt=\"A group of Korean elders seated at an outdoor wooden table toast each other with cups of makgeolli, a type of Korean rice alcohol.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Korean seniors toasted each other with cups of makgeolli, a milky-white rice liquor that’s traditional to Korea. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>The Power of a Zine\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>What they came up with was a sort of cultural memory program that checked all of those boxes. First, Ssi Ya Gi volunteers would conduct extensive interviews with Korean elders about their food memories, as well as their lives at large. The interviews themselves — the act of \u003ci>really \u003c/i>listening to an elder’s story — helped provide some of the human connection that so many homebound seniors were missing during the pandemic. And because food is such an integral part of Korean culture, Ssi Yagi’s founders all agreed that it would make the perfect interview topic, providing a way to bridge language barriers and intergenerational barriers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13899524,arts_13911528']\u003c/span>“We were thinking a lot about plants and food sustenance and the fact that historically, before the Industrial Revolution, Korea was a very agrarian country,” Lee explains. “So our seniors would have interesting stories about foods that they had in their childhood that couldn’t be found here — plants they would forage or grow in their home gardens.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the interviews, Ssi Ya Gi would collaborate with artists to create gorgeously illustrated zines based on each of the seniors’ food stories, both in English and translated back into Korean. The zines served a dual purpose: They made for lovely, personalized gifts to give back to those elders who had shared their stories. They also document a kind of oral history that’s too often lost to time and make those stories accessible to a whole new generation — starting with the zine-collecting folks in their 20s and 30s who make up the majority of Ssi Ya Gi’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ssiyagi/?hl=en\">social media followers\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930540\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930540\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012.jpg\" alt=\"A young Korean American woman looks on while an elderly Korean man in a face mask reads a zine.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Myung Kwang Shik reads a zine about his own food memories — about jjajangmyeon and his family’s rice farm. Hannah Pae (left), the zine’s author and illustrator, looks on. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Pae, who wrote and illustrated four of the zines herself, the interview process was at times quite challenging, requiring a lot of “gentle digging” to get these older immigrants to open up about their past lives. “Some of our seniors, we found it to be a little bit difficult to ask them about their favorite food memory because there was so little food at that time,” she explains. For Korean immigrants who came of age during Japanese occupation, the Korean War and the war’s aftermath, the hardships were what dominated their memories of those times. In some cases, the stories they eventually shared with Ssi Ya Gi’s interviewers were things they’d never even discussed with their own family members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One senior in Los Angeles’ Koreatown talked about how, as a single mother of five, she had supported her family by working as a dairy farmer. Another recalled the shop in her coastal hometown that specialized in all different cuts of boiled whale meat. (“It tasted similar to pork belly.”) Yet another reveled in the memory of eating freshly harvested rice from his family’s rice farm. “Shiny and greasy,” as the elder described it, Korea’s original rice was, in his memory, so much more delicious than the high-yield, modern-day rice strain that was introduced in the 1970s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In total, Ssi Ya Gi has published 10 zines to date — \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssiyagi.com/portfolio-2\">all available for purchase\u003c/a> as a way to support the organization’s ongoing community work with Korean elders in both Los Angeles and the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930547\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930547\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151.jpg\" alt=\"A woman sits in front of a spread of Korean and Ohlone dishes, including a colorful salad flecked with berries and nuts, and a bowl of bright red Korean spicy beef soup.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ssi Ya Gi’s Yoon Ju Ellie Lee enjoys a spread of Ohlone and Korean dishes, including a bountiful Ohlone salad and a bowl of soul-warming Korean fernbrake soup. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>An Acorn Story\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The zines featured prominently at Ssi Ya Gi’s Cafe Ohlone dinner. Several elders whose stories had been memorialized in a zine were in attendance, and at one point, Myung Kwang Shik, the Los Angeles-based senior who’d shared the story of his family’s rice farm, stood up and proudly read a short excerpt from his zine. Mostly, Lee says, the dinner was one more way for the Ssi Ya Gi team to show their appreciation to these Korean elders who had entrusted them with their food memories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was also a part of the group’s plan to expand its work with elders to beyond just the Korean immigrant community. Ssi Ya Gi had hosted an earlier event at a community garden run by \u003ca href=\"https://www.cultivala.org/\">CultivaLA\u003c/a>, an urban agriculture nonprofit focused on providing healthy food access for the local Latinx community. The idea was to provide a forum for intercultural connection — to allow Latino and Korean elders to listen to each other’s stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930535\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930535\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170.jpg\" alt=\"A elderly Korean woman in glasses looks on with a wistful expression on her face.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Korean elders listened with rapt attention as Cafe Ohlone’s founders spoke of the connections between their two cultures. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The dinner at Cafe Ohlone was a strong point of evidence for the Ssi Ya Gi story-sharing model’s power for cross-cultural communication. The collaboration came about because Terremoto, the landscape design firm where Pae and fellow Ssi Ya Gi co-founder Hyunch Sung first met, had helped design \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13912976/cafe-ohlone-hearst-museum-opening-singing-trees\">Cafe Ohlone’s new space\u003c/a> at UC Berkeley’s Hearst Museum of Anthropology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Having established a relationship with Medina and Trevino, Pae and Sung were struck by how many similarities there were between the Korean and Ohlone cultures. In addition to their mutual respect for elders and having both experienced the long-lasting effects of being colonized, Koreans and Ohlones also had a surprising number of food staples in common.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are so few cultures around the world who eat acorn,” Pae says. “We share acorn; we share fernbrake; we share buckwheat and mugwort. And we thought that this could be an incredible way to bridge our cultures.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930536\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930536\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181.jpg\" alt=\"Chia porridge topped with a scattering of berries and roasted hazelnuts. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">For dessert, there was Ohlone-style chia porridge topped with sweet huckleberries. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>To showcase those similarities, Cafe Ohlone and Ssi Ya Gi put together a feast cooked by local Korean chefs and the Cafe Ohlone team. The meal began with two different preparations of acorn: There was cold, velvety Ohlone black oak acorn soup, mild and refreshing. And then there were savory Korean acorn jellies, molded into the shape of actual acorns and topped with soy sauce, green onions and sesame seeds. [pullquote size=\"large\" align=\"right\" citation=\"Hannah Pae\"]“There are so few cultures around the world who eat acorn. … And we thought that this could be an incredible way to bridge our cultures.”[/pullquote]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A procession of similarly abundant dishes followed. A spread of variously pickled and fermented Korean banchan to be eaten with steamed rice. A colorful Ohlone salad of watercress, pickleweed, roasted hazelnuts and at least three different kinds of berries, luxuriously dressed in walnut oil and blackberry-bay laurel coulis. And, courtesy of Oakland’s \u003ca href=\"https://seoulgomtang.co/\">Seoul Gom Tang\u003c/a>, bowls of hot, soul-warming yukgaejang, a Korean spicy beef soup made with fernbrake — also a typical Ohlone ingredient — cooked until impossibly tender and delicious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, Cafe Ohlone’s Trevino demonstrated the traditional Ohlone method for removing the skin from acorns using a 100-year-old wooden basket, gently rocking it back and forth in order to toss the peeled acorns up into the air and catch them again. Though most of the Korean elders couldn’t understand what Trevino was saying until after the translator spoke, they watched with rapt attention, completely engrossed in what he was doing. Several of the older Korean ladies imitated his sifting motion, chattering excitedly among themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930533\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930533\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120.jpg\" alt=\"Man in glasses tosses acorns into the air using a small wooden basket.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cafe Ohlone’s Louis Trevino demonstrates the traditional method for winnowing acorns. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930532\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930532\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118.jpg\" alt=\"Man in glasses tosses acorns into the air using a small wooden basket.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">As it turns out, the technique is nearly identical to the one used in Korea. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Finally, one of them stood up and said, “We have that.” As it turns out, the traditional Korean method for winnowing acorns is almost entirely the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How many people could say they’ve shared in common an experience as specific as that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ssi Ya Gi’s founders say that’s precisely the kind of intercultural connection that they hope to foster. As Lee puts it, “Even though all of us in the collective are Korean American and our focus has been on interviewing Korean seniors, the themes are universal — and the desire to create community and retain cultural memories.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930537\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930537\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192.jpg\" alt=\"An elderly Korean woman in tinted glasses smiles as she shakes hands with an Ohlone man.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joanne Selby Kim, the subject of a zine about her memories of her father’s castella cakes, shakes hands with Medina at the end of the evening. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930538\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930538\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200.jpg\" alt=\"A Korean elder whimsically wears a colorful Ohlone blanket.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">As the evening cooled, the Cafe Ohlone team passed out colorful Ohlone blankets to keep their Korean guests warm. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In September, Ssi Ya Gi will continue that work by hosting a similar “listening supper” to celebrate Chuseok, the Korean harvest festival, in collaboration with the AAPI grassroots nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://www.cutfruitcollective.org/\">Cut Fruit Collective\u003c/a>. Held in Oakland Chinatown, the event will bring together two different communities of elders — Korean and Chinese. Later this winter, the group will also host another event in Los Angeles to showcase oral histories that they’re collecting from both Korean and Latinx elders centered on the gochu, or chili pepper. The focus, once again, will be on cross-cultural exchange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in Berkeley, the landmark Korean-Ohlone dinner wound down with laughter and embraces, as the Korean seniors thanked their Ohlone hosts for the delicious, one-of-a-kind meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Come visit us again,” Cafe Ohlone’s Medina said as he leaned over to give one elderly Korean woman a hug. “We share so much in common.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930539\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930539\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238.jpg\" alt=\"A group photo features Ssi Ya Gi's staff of Korean American volunteers as well as the Ohlone co-owners of Cafe Ohlone.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Team Ssi Ya Gi + team Cafe Ohlone. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>For updates on Ssi Ya Gi’s upcoming events in both Los Angeles and the Bay Area (specific dates TBD), following them on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ssiyagi/\">Instagram\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Ssi Ya Gi used food memories to connect with elderly Korean immigrants isolated by the pandemic.",
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"twTitle": "Acorns Aren’t the Only Thing Korean and Ohlone Elders Have in Common",
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"description": "Ssi Ya Gi used food memories to connect with elderly Korean immigrants isolated by the pandemic.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">O\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n a crisp Friday afternoon in November, an intimate group of community elders gathered at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/cafe-ohlone\">Cafe Ohlone\u003c/a> for a multi-course outdoor feast made with ingredients native to Northern California: acorn flour and fernbrake, pickleweed and sweet huckleberries. Founders Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino greeted the group in the Ohlone Chochenyo language, and as the dappled Berkeley sunlight gave way to evening, they spoke of how important it was for colonized peoples to keep their cultures alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In many ways, it was a typical dinner service at the Bay Area’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13912976/cafe-ohlone-hearst-museum-opening-singing-trees\">only dedicated Ohlone restaurant\u003c/a>, except for one notable difference: Nearly all of the diners in attendance were Korean elders, many of them monolingual. They had come to Cafe Ohlone to break bread with Ohlone neighbors they had met for the first time that day — to savor both the Korean \u003ci>and\u003c/i> Ohlone ways of preparing shared cultural ingredients such as acorn, and to hear and share stories that showed the many points of commonality between their two communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We both value respect for our elders, making sure that they’re taken care of and loved, and that their wisdom is carried on into the future,” Medina said in his introductory remarks. “Our peoples have also survived hard times, and so we always keep our cultures close.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930528\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930528\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088.jpg\" alt=\"Two indigenous Ohlone men address a group of elderly Koreans while a female Korean translator looks on from the side. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_088-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Medina (right) spoke of the many points of connection between the Korean and Ohlone cultures, including a respect for elders and resilience in the face of hardship. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The “story sharing supper” was a collaboration between Cafe Ohlone and a Korean American community organization called \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssiyagi.com/\">Ssi Ya Gi\u003c/a> (pronounced “shee-ya-ghee,” meaning “Seed Story” in Korean), whose members are based in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. It was the second in-person event of its kind — and the first in the Bay Area — for a group born out of the heightened sense of isolation that many homebound, elderly Korean immigrants experienced during the pandemic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hannah Pae, a Los Angeles-based landscape designer who co-founded Ssi Ya Gi in 2021, recalls how her own grandmother was living at a nursing home when the first wave of COVID hit the United States. “During lockdown, when my family could not visit her, her health deteriorated. She wasn’t eating Korean food; people in the nursing home couldn’t speak Korean,” Pae says. “It was just heartbreaking to feel so helpless and see her health decline so rapidly because of the isolation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930531\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930531\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115.jpg\" alt=\"On a dining table, a boat-shaped paper tray of Korean acorn jellies molded into the shape of actual acorns. Decorative lemons and walnuts in their shell form a centerpiece for the table.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_115-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Acorn was served two ways: traditional Ohlone chilled acorn soup and, pictured here, Korean acorn jellies topped with soy sauce and scallions. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Pae’s grandmother wound up passing away not long after the start of the pandemic. Driven by that painful experience, Pae started talking to Hyunch Sung, a landscape design colleague based in the East Bay, about putting together a project that would allow young Korean Americans to forge a “human-to-human connection” with seniors in their community to help alleviate some of that isolation. Eventually, the two of them teamed up a handful of other like-minded folks: plant designer Ginny Hwang, Yoon Ju Ellie Lee of the diasporic Korean arts collective \u003ca href=\"https://gyopo.us/\">GYOPO\u003c/a>, and community nonprofit consultant Grace Jiyun Lee, who’d spent those early months of the pandemic organizing hot meal deliveries for Korean elders through San Francisco’s Korean American Community Foundation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We knew we wanted to connect over food and plants,” Lee says. “We wanted to do this for our seniors but also for ourselves — as a learning for us and also [to share] information that would otherwise be lost with other interested community members.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930530\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930530\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031.jpg\" alt=\"A group of Korean elders seated at an outdoor wooden table toast each other with cups of makgeolli, a type of Korean rice alcohol.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_031-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Korean seniors toasted each other with cups of makgeolli, a milky-white rice liquor that’s traditional to Korea. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>The Power of a Zine\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>What they came up with was a sort of cultural memory program that checked all of those boxes. First, Ssi Ya Gi volunteers would conduct extensive interviews with Korean elders about their food memories, as well as their lives at large. The interviews themselves — the act of \u003ci>really \u003c/i>listening to an elder’s story — helped provide some of the human connection that so many homebound seniors were missing during the pandemic. And because food is such an integral part of Korean culture, Ssi Yagi’s founders all agreed that it would make the perfect interview topic, providing a way to bridge language barriers and intergenerational barriers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>“We were thinking a lot about plants and food sustenance and the fact that historically, before the Industrial Revolution, Korea was a very agrarian country,” Lee explains. “So our seniors would have interesting stories about foods that they had in their childhood that couldn’t be found here — plants they would forage or grow in their home gardens.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the interviews, Ssi Ya Gi would collaborate with artists to create gorgeously illustrated zines based on each of the seniors’ food stories, both in English and translated back into Korean. The zines served a dual purpose: They made for lovely, personalized gifts to give back to those elders who had shared their stories. They also document a kind of oral history that’s too often lost to time and make those stories accessible to a whole new generation — starting with the zine-collecting folks in their 20s and 30s who make up the majority of Ssi Ya Gi’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ssiyagi/?hl=en\">social media followers\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930540\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930540\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012.jpg\" alt=\"A young Korean American woman looks on while an elderly Korean man in a face mask reads a zine.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_012-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Myung Kwang Shik reads a zine about his own food memories — about jjajangmyeon and his family’s rice farm. Hannah Pae (left), the zine’s author and illustrator, looks on. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For Pae, who wrote and illustrated four of the zines herself, the interview process was at times quite challenging, requiring a lot of “gentle digging” to get these older immigrants to open up about their past lives. “Some of our seniors, we found it to be a little bit difficult to ask them about their favorite food memory because there was so little food at that time,” she explains. For Korean immigrants who came of age during Japanese occupation, the Korean War and the war’s aftermath, the hardships were what dominated their memories of those times. In some cases, the stories they eventually shared with Ssi Ya Gi’s interviewers were things they’d never even discussed with their own family members.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One senior in Los Angeles’ Koreatown talked about how, as a single mother of five, she had supported her family by working as a dairy farmer. Another recalled the shop in her coastal hometown that specialized in all different cuts of boiled whale meat. (“It tasted similar to pork belly.”) Yet another reveled in the memory of eating freshly harvested rice from his family’s rice farm. “Shiny and greasy,” as the elder described it, Korea’s original rice was, in his memory, so much more delicious than the high-yield, modern-day rice strain that was introduced in the 1970s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In total, Ssi Ya Gi has published 10 zines to date — \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssiyagi.com/portfolio-2\">all available for purchase\u003c/a> as a way to support the organization’s ongoing community work with Korean elders in both Los Angeles and the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930547\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930547\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151.jpg\" alt=\"A woman sits in front of a spread of Korean and Ohlone dishes, including a colorful salad flecked with berries and nuts, and a bowl of bright red Korean spicy beef soup.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_151-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ssi Ya Gi’s Yoon Ju Ellie Lee enjoys a spread of Ohlone and Korean dishes, including a bountiful Ohlone salad and a bowl of soul-warming Korean fernbrake soup. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>An Acorn Story\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The zines featured prominently at Ssi Ya Gi’s Cafe Ohlone dinner. Several elders whose stories had been memorialized in a zine were in attendance, and at one point, Myung Kwang Shik, the Los Angeles-based senior who’d shared the story of his family’s rice farm, stood up and proudly read a short excerpt from his zine. Mostly, Lee says, the dinner was one more way for the Ssi Ya Gi team to show their appreciation to these Korean elders who had entrusted them with their food memories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was also a part of the group’s plan to expand its work with elders to beyond just the Korean immigrant community. Ssi Ya Gi had hosted an earlier event at a community garden run by \u003ca href=\"https://www.cultivala.org/\">CultivaLA\u003c/a>, an urban agriculture nonprofit focused on providing healthy food access for the local Latinx community. The idea was to provide a forum for intercultural connection — to allow Latino and Korean elders to listen to each other’s stories.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930535\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930535\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170.jpg\" alt=\"A elderly Korean woman in glasses looks on with a wistful expression on her face.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_170-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Korean elders listened with rapt attention as Cafe Ohlone’s founders spoke of the connections between their two cultures. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The dinner at Cafe Ohlone was a strong point of evidence for the Ssi Ya Gi story-sharing model’s power for cross-cultural communication. The collaboration came about because Terremoto, the landscape design firm where Pae and fellow Ssi Ya Gi co-founder Hyunch Sung first met, had helped design \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13912976/cafe-ohlone-hearst-museum-opening-singing-trees\">Cafe Ohlone’s new space\u003c/a> at UC Berkeley’s Hearst Museum of Anthropology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Having established a relationship with Medina and Trevino, Pae and Sung were struck by how many similarities there were between the Korean and Ohlone cultures. In addition to their mutual respect for elders and having both experienced the long-lasting effects of being colonized, Koreans and Ohlones also had a surprising number of food staples in common.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are so few cultures around the world who eat acorn,” Pae says. “We share acorn; we share fernbrake; we share buckwheat and mugwort. And we thought that this could be an incredible way to bridge our cultures.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930536\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930536\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181.jpg\" alt=\"Chia porridge topped with a scattering of berries and roasted hazelnuts. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_181-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">For dessert, there was Ohlone-style chia porridge topped with sweet huckleberries. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>To showcase those similarities, Cafe Ohlone and Ssi Ya Gi put together a feast cooked by local Korean chefs and the Cafe Ohlone team. The meal began with two different preparations of acorn: There was cold, velvety Ohlone black oak acorn soup, mild and refreshing. And then there were savory Korean acorn jellies, molded into the shape of actual acorns and topped with soy sauce, green onions and sesame seeds. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A procession of similarly abundant dishes followed. A spread of variously pickled and fermented Korean banchan to be eaten with steamed rice. A colorful Ohlone salad of watercress, pickleweed, roasted hazelnuts and at least three different kinds of berries, luxuriously dressed in walnut oil and blackberry-bay laurel coulis. And, courtesy of Oakland’s \u003ca href=\"https://seoulgomtang.co/\">Seoul Gom Tang\u003c/a>, bowls of hot, soul-warming yukgaejang, a Korean spicy beef soup made with fernbrake — also a typical Ohlone ingredient — cooked until impossibly tender and delicious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, Cafe Ohlone’s Trevino demonstrated the traditional Ohlone method for removing the skin from acorns using a 100-year-old wooden basket, gently rocking it back and forth in order to toss the peeled acorns up into the air and catch them again. Though most of the Korean elders couldn’t understand what Trevino was saying until after the translator spoke, they watched with rapt attention, completely engrossed in what he was doing. Several of the older Korean ladies imitated his sifting motion, chattering excitedly among themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930533\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930533\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120.jpg\" alt=\"Man in glasses tosses acorns into the air using a small wooden basket.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_120-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cafe Ohlone’s Louis Trevino demonstrates the traditional method for winnowing acorns. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930532\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930532\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118.jpg\" alt=\"Man in glasses tosses acorns into the air using a small wooden basket.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_118-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">As it turns out, the technique is nearly identical to the one used in Korea. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Finally, one of them stood up and said, “We have that.” As it turns out, the traditional Korean method for winnowing acorns is almost entirely the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How many people could say they’ve shared in common an experience as specific as that?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ssi Ya Gi’s founders say that’s precisely the kind of intercultural connection that they hope to foster. As Lee puts it, “Even though all of us in the collective are Korean American and our focus has been on interviewing Korean seniors, the themes are universal — and the desire to create community and retain cultural memories.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930537\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930537\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192.jpg\" alt=\"An elderly Korean woman in tinted glasses smiles as she shakes hands with an Ohlone man.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_192-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Joanne Selby Kim, the subject of a zine about her memories of her father’s castella cakes, shakes hands with Medina at the end of the evening. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930538\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930538\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200.jpg\" alt=\"A Korean elder whimsically wears a colorful Ohlone blanket.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_200-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">As the evening cooled, the Cafe Ohlone team passed out colorful Ohlone blankets to keep their Korean guests warm. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In September, Ssi Ya Gi will continue that work by hosting a similar “listening supper” to celebrate Chuseok, the Korean harvest festival, in collaboration with the AAPI grassroots nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://www.cutfruitcollective.org/\">Cut Fruit Collective\u003c/a>. Held in Oakland Chinatown, the event will bring together two different communities of elders — Korean and Chinese. Later this winter, the group will also host another event in Los Angeles to showcase oral histories that they’re collecting from both Korean and Latinx elders centered on the gochu, or chili pepper. The focus, once again, will be on cross-cultural exchange.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in Berkeley, the landmark Korean-Ohlone dinner wound down with laughter and embraces, as the Korean seniors thanked their Ohlone hosts for the delicious, one-of-a-kind meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Come visit us again,” Cafe Ohlone’s Medina said as he leaned over to give one elderly Korean woman a hug. “We share so much in common.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13930539\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13930539\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238.jpg\" alt=\"A group photo features Ssi Ya Gi's staff of Korean American volunteers as well as the Ohlone co-owners of Cafe Ohlone.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238-1020x681.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/OhloneKorean_HW_238-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Team Ssi Ya Gi + team Cafe Ohlone. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Hardy Wilson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>For updates on Ssi Ya Gi’s upcoming events in both Los Angeles and the Bay Area (specific dates TBD), following them on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ssiyagi/\">Instagram\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
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"order": 8
},
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},
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"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
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"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
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},
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"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
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"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
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"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
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},
"closealltabs": {
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"order": 1
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"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
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"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 9
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
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"meta": {
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},
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
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},
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
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},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
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"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
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"how-i-built-this": {
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"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
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},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
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},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
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"order": 15
},
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},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
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"order": 18
},
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}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
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"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
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"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
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},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
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},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
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"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
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"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
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"source": "wnyc"
},
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